The Heart of the Matter

by Lindsay Armstrong

  'Sounds like it, darling.'

  Whereupon Sophie wriggled off her lap and raced out on to the verandah in a flash of blue dungarees.

  'Well, this is a surprise,' said Moira Stapleton. 'I take it Mr. Randall has arrived?'

  'He said he might,' said Clarissa.

  'Super!' Moira Stapleton smiled some time later. 'We didn't expect you, Mr. Randall, but I know it will be an added plus for the programme. And that last shot of the three of you just caps it off. You have a very lovely, charming wife—she's been superb today! And as for your daughter

  'I can imagine,' Robert Randall said with a grin and Sophie's hand tucked into his. He had just released Clarissa.

  'Ill let you know well in advance when this segment goes to air. Goodbye, all!'

  They waved Moira Stapleton off, and then her crew in their Range Rover.

  'She doesn't believe in fraternizing,' Robert Randall observed.

  No. They call her Cleopatra. But I thought she was very nice,' Clarissa said huskily.

  'It sounds as if it was a great success, as if you two wowed them. Only,' he stopped and searched her face critically, 'you're looking a bit pale now, Clarry.'

  Clarissa raised her blue-grey eyes to her tall, dark, husbands very blue ones. 'Just glad it's over,' she said quietly.

  'If it was going to be a strain you shouldn’t...’

  'No!' she broke in. 'I'm fine, and I'm glad I did it.'

  'Come inside, then, and I'll pour you a drink.' He picked Sophie up. 'Nearly supper time for you, little one, I guess.'

  . 'Bath time first,' Mrs. Jacobs said firmly, materializing beside them, and Sophie, who adored her bath, went off with her quite happily.

  'Er...' Evonne cleared her throat from the shadows of the verandah behind them.

  Robert Randall turned to her. 'You're not planning to go home tonight, are you, Evonne?'

  'I was, actually,' said Evonne. 'I've spent two nights here already and I wouldn't like to wear out my welcome.' She smiled faintly. 'But I didn't expect it to finish so late. However, I can put up in Holbrook for the night.'

  Rob said, 'That's ridiculous!' And looked at Clarissa.

  'Of course you must stay the night, Evonne,' Clarissa told her. 'It's only good sense. Anyway, we'd enjoy having your company for dinner,' she added after a slight pause during which she was struck by the oddest impression that there was something curiously unguarded and vulnerable in Evonne's dark eyes.

  Perhaps she's afraid I'll tell Rob about that little mix-up we had this morning? The fleeting thought touched her mind, together with a twinge of uncertainty about Evonne Patterson. 'Do stay,' she said then, more warmly, and wasn't quite sure why.

  They ate formally because Mrs. Jacobs had insisted on setting the long, gleaming mahogany table in the dining-room, and her meal was a masterpiece—a creamy mushroom soup, homemade, a hearty oxtail casserole for which she was renowned, followed by fruit and cheese.

  Nor was the meal marred by hidden tensions, as Clarissa had been afraid it might. But then when Rob set his mind to charm and put people at their ease, he was usually successful, and he soon had both Clarissa and Evonne recounting incidents of the day with some hilarity.

  So much so that only a very small portion of Clarissa's mind remained tuned in to the effect Evonne might have on Rob and vice versa. Not, she did acknowledge to herself, that she would be able to tell what Rob was thinking. But, she also acknowledged, there was nothing in Evonne's manner that indicated anything more than the way most females reacted to the dynamic, handsome enigma that was Robert Randall. Nor was the dynamism much in evidence tonight, she reflected, as she watched Rob lying back in his chair, sipping his wine and dropping the odd idle remark into the conversation. He's so... I don't know what, she thought with a sudden pang. He's got both of us eating out of his hand right at this moment...

  '... Sorry! What was that?' She turned to Evonne.

  'I was saying that you were so good with those sheep, you and Mem. I always thought they were exceptionally silly creatures. And the way you rode that horse! As if you were born in the saddle.'

  'Thank you. But that was only a small mob...’

  'Clarissa is one of the best riders and drovers I've ever seen,' said Rob, and smiled lazily at her.

  'Only because you taught me so well,' she assured him, but couldn't help coloring faintly with pleasure. 'Shall we take our coffee in the drawing-room?' she added almost immediately.

  'I'm glad I did stay after all,' commented Evonne from in front of the huge fireplace. 'It's been a nice way to wind down. Thank you both.'

  'It has, hasn't it?' Clarissa agreed, and was conscious again of a feeling of confusion regarding Evonne Patterson. Because she had been good company and shown no desire to be upstaging, nor had she and Rob talked business as well they might have—she was his press secretary, after all. Maybe it was just my overwrought imagination this morning, she mused.

  Then Evonne yawned delicately and said she thought she might go to bed. '... You don't have to come with me, Mrs. Randall. I know my way. I'll just have to unpack some things,' she said whimsically.

  'Oh,' Clarissa smiled at her, 'I don't mind. I can check that you have everything you need.'

  But of course everything was perfect in the guestroom because Mrs. Jacobs was another of those super-efficient people, and if there was one thing Clarissa's mother had been able to imbue in her daughter, it was correct hostessing procedures.

  In fact, escorting Evonne Patterson to bed reminded Clarissa of her mother, and as she walked back down the passageway lined with oil paintings of her

  Kingston ancestors, she wondered who her mother was entertaining now in her Malibu house or maybe the Palm Springs one. But whichever, there would be someone staying, unless she had changed drastically over the past months, or her ultra-wealthy American husband had changed her...

  Rob was still stretched out in his favorite chair before the fire when Clarissa walked back into the drawing room, but he looked round as her heels tapped on the parquet floor. 'Set for the night?' he asked.

  'Yes.' Clarissa stopped beside his chair. 'I think I'll go to bed too. I am tired now.'

  He stood up. 'I've got a few things to go over...’

  He looked down at her, then put a hand on her shoulder and tipped her chin up with his other hand. 'All right?' he queried quietly but with those blue eyes curiously probing.

  'Yes,' she whispered, and felt that odd prickle again.

  He stared down at her until she said, 'I am really, Rob.'

  'Good.' He released her chin and bent to kiss her brow. 'Sleep well, Clarry.'

  'I made it,' Clarissa said out loud to herself as she closed the bedroom door and leant back against it briefly. Then she pushed herself away and started on the familiar routine of getting herself ready for bed.

  It was a huge room with a magnificent double four-poster bed, its own fireplace and a muted colour scheme of avocado green, ivory and pink copied from the beautiful and very old chintz curtains.

  Yes, I made it, she mused as she changed into a fine Vyella nightgown with delicate pin tucking and frills

  round the neck and wrists. And she went to sleep with that thought on her mind and with the shadows of the flames from the fire flickering on the ivory wallpaper.

  But when she woke, the room was cold and dark and she tensed, coming wide awake in an instant with the day rushing back at her in the clearest detail. And she suddenly knew that she hadn't made it at all, that she'd only been fooling herself—that Rob had been right, the strain of it or something, had been too much.

  'Oh God, oh God!' she whispered with her knuckles pressed to her mouth. But the tears started to flow and she sat up and hugged herself distraughtly, with her hair falling over her face. Then she reached for the glass of water on the table beside the bed, but knocked it over and froze as it thumped on to the carpet and then rolled off noisily on to the floor.

  Please don't let him hear, she prayed. Please...
>
  But the interleading door opened and she saw the tall figure of Robert Randall outlined in the light from the next bedroom. Then a switch clicked and her own room was flooded with light.

  Rob was still dressed but wearing a navy-blue sweater instead of his jacket and his dark hair was ruffled as if he had run his fingers through it recently. He said interrogatively, 'Clarry? What's wrong?'

  'N-nothing,' she stammered.

  'So why are you crying?'

  'I... I.. .'She put her hands to her face as if to hide the evidence.

  'Oh yes, you are.' He came over to the bed and sat down beside her.

  'I'm cold. I mean that's not why, but I should have built up the fire. I mean...' She tailed off incoherently.

  'You mean,' he said after a moment, 'the day was too much for you.'

  'No! I'm not an invalid! Why should it have been too much? I'm as strong as a horse.' But the tears were streaming down her face again and he made an impatient sound and pulled her into his arms.

  'Tell me why you're so upset, then!' he commanded, and smoothed her tangled hair away from her face.

  Clarissa stared up at him with her lips set mutinously, but he smudged her tears with his fingers and a few last strands of hair from the corner of her mouth, and said, 'Clarry.'

  She closed her eyes and turned her face into the navy-blue wool of his jumper. Because, for almost as long as she could remember anything, she could remember Rob Randall saying 'Clarry' to her in just that tone of voice. Quietly, but in a way that brooked no defiance, that told her it was useless to try to evade him.

  'I ... all those lies I told today,' she wept. 'All the false images I presented—we did! Happy family, happy wife

  CHAPTER TWO

  Rob was silent until Clarissa's tears subsided and she turned her face back to him and sniffed miserably.

  Then he seemed to sigh, and reached for the cobweb-fine, lacy shawl that lay across the bottom of the bed and wrapped her in its voluminous folds, pulled the pillows up and laid her back against them. He stood up and walked across to the fireplace where he picked up the poker and with the aid of some kindling and logs from the basket on the hearth, got it going again. He came back to the bed, wiping his hands on his handkerchief, then bent down and retrieved the fallen glass. Then he sat down beside her again.

  'It was your idea that we have this kind of marriage,' he said evenly, at last. 'We didn't start out like this, if you recall.'

  Clarissa had watched his every move, her eyes huge and dark. She looked away now and muttered, 'That was because I didn't know...’

  There are a lot of things you don't know, Clarry,' he interrupted.

  'I do know you didn't love me,' she whispered. 'Not the way—the proper way for a man and a woman.'

  'Unfortunately, you weren't quite a woman.'

  'I was old enough to have Sophie.'

  'That's a biological matter,' he said drily. 'But otherwise, to have reacted the way you did...’

  'How else should I have reacted?' she said agitatedly.

  He watched her carefully for a moment and then shrugged slightly. 'All right, if you don't want to talk about it, if it still upsets you so much

  'No, I don't want to talk about it—that. And not because it upsets me,' Clarissa said with a sudden spark of anger in her eyes, 'but because it can't change anything. It happened and that's that. I just don't understand why you want me to live with you as a dutiful little wife when you wouldn't ever have married me if ... if ...' She stopped abruptly at the ironic glance he cast her, and felt herself flushing.

  'Would it be so very hard to be a real wife?' he queried after a moment.

  'Yes—yes, it would,' she whispered, and licked her lips. 'The fact that I had a foolish crush on you for most of my life doesn't mean I could ... I could do that.'

  'Then what we have is the only alternative, Clarry. I thought, as a matter of fact, I thought you were happy—content, anyway. You're doing what you like best now, just as you dreamt of when you were a teenager. You always said you wanted to help run Mirrabilla.'

  She was silent and he watched her pleating the cream wool of the shawl a little feverishly. And when she gave no sign of answering, his mouth hardened and he said, 'I must warn you, Clarry, if you're thinking of trying to run away again, don't.'

  'But we can't go on like this for the rest of our lives, Rob!'

  'That's up to you,' he said curtly.

  ‘Rob.. .'

  'Clarry, if you think I'd let not one but two children loose in the world, you're mistaken.'

  ‘Oh, Rob,' she protested, her eyes agonized, Tm not

  a child any more. I'm twenty-two.’

  'Then prove it,' he said.

  ‘I...' Clarissa's voice stuck in her throat and she flinched at his brief, cold smile. Then she struck out blindly with words. 'Isn't your revenge complete otherwise, Rob? But then aren't you hurting yourself as much as anyone?'

  He had been looking down, but his dark lashes lifted abruptly and she saw the kind of anger in his eyes she had never seen directed at her before. Not even when she'd run away. Then it was gone, to be replaced by a sort of mild cynicism, and he said quite gently, 'If I'd really set my mind to it, Clarry, I could have come up with something much better in that line. Such as seeing you evicted from here or sold off to the highest bidder. Take James Halliday, for example.' He paused as she bit her lip. 'I imagine,' he went on dispassionately, 'you would have found being taken to his bed first, instead of mine, not quite what you would have liked. I imagine he would have left that lovely soft, very young body of yours,' his blue gaze flickered down and then up again meaningfully, rather bruised and hurt, don't you think? Which you have to acquit me of at least, in spite of all my other— sins. I don't suppose he would have cared much that you were extremely innocent and—frightened.'

  Clarissa took a faltering breath and tried to look away, but something in his gaze wouldn't let her. 'No,' she whispered at last, 'he wouldn't have. Oh, Rob, it's not that I don't... appreciate that...' She put a hand to her mouth. 'I sometimes don't know what to think, you know.'

  They sat like that for a while, in silence, but Clarissa had managed to look away at last.

  'Why don't you think of Sophie, then?' he said

  eventually, and his voice was quite different and the cynical light had gone out of his eyes. 'And how much it would hurt all of us if we subjected her to a custody battle.'

  'Yes, of course...’

  Robert touched her hot cheek with his fingers and his voice was different again as he said, 'I've got an even better idea. Why don't you forget all about it and try to sleep now? Shall I get you a hot drink?'

  '... No, thanks. I'll be fine.' She tried to smile.

  'You said that earlier.'

  ‘I...' She made an enormous effort to stop her voice from wobbling. 'Perhaps I just needed to get it off my chest. You're up very late, aren't you?'

  'I was just coming to bed. It's only,' he glanced at his watch and raised his eyebrows, 'it's one o'clock, later than I thought.'

  'Why do you still work so hard?' she asked involuntarily.

  He shrugged. 'Habit, I guess. But there are times when I find it hard to sleep too. Goodnight, Clarry.'

  She stared at the door he'd left slightly ajar until his light went out as well and there was only the firelight in the room, flickering and casting odd shadows. And she turned her cheek to the pillow and found herself looking back over the years, to when she had been very young...

  '... Clarissa Jane Kingston! Oh, look at you! Dirty and torn—little boys might get around like that, but not little girls!'

  'I don't think Clarry knows the difference yet,' Ian Kingston said with all the wisdom of his fourteen years as opposed to Clarissa's six.

  'Do so!' Clarissa objected.

  'Now look here, Master Ian,' Mrs. Jacobs intervened hastily, 'you shouldn't encourage her...’

  'Encourage her!' It was Ian's turn to object. 'That's the last thing I do.
Why would I want a kid sister tagging along wherever I go? She follows us whenever she gets the chance. Maybe we ought to build her a doll's house—and lock her in! I mean, she nearly drowned the other day. We didn't even know she was there until we heard her cry out, and there she was, upstream, sailing into the creek on the end of a rod.'

  'But I caught that fish,' Clarissa said proudly. 'Didn't I, Ian? Rob said it was a beauty.'

  ‘I caught you," Ian replied loftily. 'The thing is, you know you're not allowed down at the creek, Clarry.'

  'I am with you and Rob

  'But we didn't take you! You followed when you were supposed to be doing something else.'

  'What she needs are some kids of her own age,' Mrs. Jacobs said worriedly. 'She's got—twenty-six dolls!'

  'But I like horses,' Clarissa said candidly. 'Not dolls. And fishing and swimming...’

  'We do know that,' her brother broke in sarcastically. 'Anyway, Rob's teaching her to ride—that's why she's in such a mess today, so don't blame me for it, Mrs. Jacobs. For some reason he has more patience with her.'

  'Well, your father did agree that she could learn— heaven help us, but I still don't see why she should be in such a mess.'

  'I fell off. Into a puddle...’

  'It was soft mud,' said Ian as Mrs. Jacobs began to feel Clarissa's limbs anxiously.

  ‘But...’

  'Everyone falls off, Mrs. Jacobs, but you can trust Rob to see that she doesn't hurt herself. And old

  Cuddles is as safe as houses.'

  'It was my fault,' Clarissa said earnestly. 'Rob said I was daydreaming.'

  About nine months later, on the morning of her seventh birthday, Clarissa said softly, 'Oh ...' and started to cry.

  Ian Kingston and Rob Randall looked at each other ruefully. It was a beautiful summery morning during the first week of the school holidays with the last wisps of an early mist floating over the great golden paddocks.

  'Don't you like her, Clarry?' asked Rob, patting the neck of the pretty grey pony he held on a royal-blue lead.

  'She's beautiful!' Clarissa wept.

  'She certainly is, compared to Cuddles,' Ian said critically, 'but why are you crying?'