A Wild Affair

by Charlotte Lamb

  'No,' Joe snarled. 'I'm not in the least amused, madam.'

  Brendan leaned forward and tapped on the glass between them and the driver. 'We're in a hurry, drive on.'

  The man threw a look back at Joe, hesitating, remembering the five-pound note he had been given.

  'We'll miss our train if we don't go now,' urged Brendan, and the man shrugged.

  Quincy sat, cold and miserable, in the corner as the taxi moved off, hearing Joe's voice behind them. 'Quincy!'

  She knew what he had wanted to say to her, she didn't need to hear it. Joe had come to say goodbye, but she had already said it to him in her heart, it didn't need saying aloud.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Quincy might have imagined that in leaving London behind she would also be escaping from the attentions of the press, but, as she discovered when she got out of a taxi outside her home, she was sadly mistaken. A flashbulb exploded, almost blinding her, as she turned towards the gate, and the next moment a young man in a leather jacket was giving her a coaxing smile and asking breathlessly: 'How does it feel to be back home, Quincy?' Still dazed after the surprise of the flashbulb, Quincy automatically said: 'Fine,' before she halted, her mouth open.

  'What was it like having a date with Joe Aldonez? Will you be seeing him again? What did he say to you?'

  Since she made no attempt to answer any of the questions, merely stared at him, going crimson with growing rage, he rushed on to the next one, apparently in the hope of startling some sort of answer out of her. 'What happened when you had dinner with him?'

  Brendan had paid off the driver and was manhandling the cases out on to the road. Taking in what was going on, he dropped them both and took two rapid steps, grabbing the young man by his collar.

  'Here, what're you up to?' the reporter gurgled as Brendan bundled him away from Quincy. The photographer took a couple of quick pictures before he fled to their waiting car. Brendan frogmarched the reporter after him and bawled: 'And don't come back!' before he returned to join Quincy, who had taken advantage of his rescue attempt to flee towards the house. The front door opened and her mother smiled at her.

  'Mum!' Quincy almost wailed, on the point of breaking into childish tears, and Mrs Jones looked sharply at her, her smile vanishing.

  'Whatever is the matter? Is it those journalists? They've been hanging about all afternoon, I told them to go away but they took no notice. I should have called the police. Did they pester you?'

  'Yes, they started on her the minute she was out of the taxi,' Brendan answered for her as he hauled the cases through the door.

  'I've got the kettle on,' Mrs Jones said excitedly. 'Come and have your tea and tell me all about it—I'm dying to hear every detail.'

  'I'm tired, Mum,' said Quincy, and out of the corner of her eye caught Brendan shaking his head at her mother.

  'I'm sure you are,' Mrs Jones said more soberly. 'That train journey takes it out of you, I know whenever I get back from London I feel worn out.' She was looking at Quincy searchingly as she talked and Quincy avoided meeting her eyes. While she was in London she had rung her family several times, but on the phone it had been easy to elude difficult questions. Face to face, it wouldn't be so simple, she was afraid of what she might betray. She had pretended to go to sleep in the train, which had kept Brendan at bay, but unless she was going to imitate the Sleeping Beauty and stay in her bed for the next few months sooner or later she would have to talk to her mother.

  'I'll have to go and check up on my patients,' said Brendan, vanishing towards the surgery, and Quincy rather regretted his disappearance. She could have used Brendan as a shield, but, once they were alone, she was going to have to face her mother without defence. She had never needed to hide from her mother in the past and she found it painful to need to do so now, but then she had never before felt an emotion she did not want her mother to suspect. Her life until now had been an open book, she had never learnt how to disguise her feelings, nor had she ever before had feelings so powerful she was afraid to let them be glimpsed by anyone.

  In the kitchen the kettle had begun to boil with shrill insistence and Mrs Jones ran to snatch it up and make the tea.

  'Your father's out on his rounds,' she said as she covered the pot with a knitted patchwork cosy. Staring at it, Quincy remembered making it while she was at school. The gaudy red and yellow wool had faded with washing and the lining was showing through. She stared as intently as though she had never seen it before while her mother talked. 'We've kept every one of the papers, your father got them all every day. Wonderful pictures of you—I've started a scrapbook of them, but there were so many pictures I haven't had time to stick them all in.' She put the teapot on the table. 'I've got some scones in the oven, they'll be ready in a minute. Wait until Bobby gets home from school, he's dying to hear all about it. His friends have been badgering him…'

  'That's nothing to what I'd like to do to him,' Quincy said grimly.

  'Why, what's he done now?' his fond mother asked without sounding very surprised at the threat in her daughter's voice.

  'He got me into all this,' Quincy muttered.

  Her mother shot her a look. 'Didn't you have a good time, Quincy?'

  'Don't ask,' Quincy begged. 'I can't face talking about it at the moment—you've no idea what a trauma the whole thing was!'

  Mrs Jones didn't seem anxious. 'I suppose you're not used to so much excitement, but when you look back on it you'll be glad it happened,' she said calmly.

  That's what you think, Quincy thought, as her mother got the scones out of the oven and tipped them out on to a cooling tray.

  The phone rang and Mrs Jones said absently: 'Answer that, will you, Quincy? Don't forget, your father's out, but Brendan is in the surgery.'

  Quincy looked at the phone with nervous loathing. 'Could you answer it, Mum? It might be the press, and I really can't face the idea of talking to them.' Secretly, she suspected it might be Joe, and her desire not to talk to him was a good deal stronger than her dislike of talking to the press.

  Her mother wiped her hands on her pinny and went across the room to pick up the shrilling telephone. 'Hallo?' She listened, then smiled. 'Oh, hallo, Penny dear, how are you? How's the baby?' She paused, eyes bright, then said, 'Is he? Well, at that age they get everywhere, the minute they can walk they're swarming all over the furniture.'

  Quincy snatched a hot scone and dropped it on her plate, blowing on her fingers.

  Her mother turned and held out the phone, 'Penny to speak to you,' she said, and Quincy went over to take the call.

  'Hello, star!' Penny teased, and Quincy grimaced to herself.

  'Hallo,' she said warily. 'I gather David is on his feet at last.'

  'Unfortunately,' Penny groaned. 'I was so thrilled two days ago. He took one tottery step and fell flat on his nose, and I was over the moon, but since then he refuses to stay put anywhere. He screams if I try to put him in his pram and insists on practising for the marathon all over the house. I can't take my eyes off him in case he gets out into the farmyard and is eaten by the ducks.'

  'I'd be more worried about the ducks if I were you,' Quincy said, and her friend laughed.

  'You're so right! Anyway, what about your adventures? Don't think we haven't been kept informed.

  Along with the whole village we've been following your rake's progress with fascination.'

  'Everything that happened has been publicly chronicled,' Quincy lied, hoping she sounded convincing.

  'Everything?' queried Penny, sounding far from convinced.

  'Absolutely everything!'

  'I don't want to call you a liar,' Penny began, and Quincy interrupted.

  'Glad to hear it!'

  'But,' Penny went on, overriding her, 'I don't believe a word of it. Come on, Joe Aldonez spent a whole evening with you—he must have said something that didn't get into the papers.'

  'If he did, it was by accident,' said Quincy. 'I think our table was bugged. Maybe they missed the odd word,
but not much else.'

  'Why do I get the feeling you're holding out on me?'

  'Nothing to hold out on,' Quincy said firmly. 'I'll be over to see you soon, I can't wait to see David legging it for the wide open spaces.'

  'All right,' said Penny with an ominous note in her voice, 'I'll talk to you then.'

  Quincy hung up and turned to find her mother observing her with shrewd, bright eyes. Flushed, Quincy went back to butter her scone while it was still warm, and while she was drinking her tea her father came into the kitchen, his skin glowing from a battle with the spring wind, his hair ruffled and his stride forceful.

  'You're home!' he said, coming over to hug her and rub his cold cheek against hers. 'Everyone in the district has been talking about you, they're dying of curiosity. Suddenly you're famous. How does it feel?'

  'Terrible,' she said frankly. 'And before you start asking, yes, I had an exciting time in London and yes, I'm very glad to be home, and no, I don't want to talk about it. At the moment all I want to do is forget it ever happened.' She got up and walked to the door. 'I think I'll have a bath,' she said over her shoulder as she left the room, aware of her parents staring at each other behind her.

  They discreetly asked her no further questions when she drifted downstairs an hour later. Bobby, however, was not so easily silenced and fired a positive volley of questions at her when he got back from school. Since he was largely interested in knowing what sort of car Joe Aldonez had, how fast it went and what Quincy had eaten at the dinner party, however, she found it comparatively harmless to face his quiz. Bobby did make a hooting comment on one or two of the pictures which had appeared in the papers.

  'You looked pretty daft when you were dancing with him in that night club, but I suppose you couldn't help that, girls are always swooning over pop stars.'

  'Not this girl,' said Quincy, grabbing his ear. 'If you hope I've gone soft at the centre, you can forget it, Bobby Jones. I haven't forgotten who filled in that form.'

  'Ouch!' he yelped, squirming away. 'I've got homework to do—'bye!' He vanished up the stairs and a moment later the usual heavy thud of rock came from his room as he settled down to a quiet hour with his books.

  'His transistor has packed up altogether,' Mrs Jones said thoughtfully. 'Next time I'm in town I'll have a look at radios and see if I can afford a new one for him.'

  'Masochist,' Quincy said affectionately.

  'Well, he's a good boy,' his mother insisted, and Quincy gave her an incredulous smile.

  'Who, him? Mother darling, may you be forgiven!'

  'He could be worse,' Mrs Jones defended.

  'By what stretch of the imagination do you work that out?' Quincy demanded, prodding the vegetables cooking on the stove.

  'He works hard at school and he's very careful with the money he earns with his paper-round.'

  'You mean he's a miser,' Quincy agreed. 'Yes, I think he's got more in the post office bank than I have.'

  'That's not fair!' Mrs Jones fired. 'He bought me a very pretty ornament for my birthday, he's very thoughtful.'

  Quincy gave her an amused smile. 'All right, we'll agree—Bobby's an angel, all he needs is some wings.'

  'And a new transistor,' her mother said, chuckling.

  That was to arrive two days later. The parcel was addressed to Bobby and caused much excitement in the house as it stood in the hall waiting for him to get back home from school. Mrs Jones was dying to know what it contained, pinching it and brooding over it every five minutes, until Quincy suggested she should open it as she was so fascinated.

  'Of course not, it's addressed to Bobby,' her mother said, going pink and marching away.

  The minute Bobby came through the front door he spotted it with his usual lynx-like keen sight. 'What's that?' he asked, falling on it with unhidden curiosity before he even realised it was addressed to him. 'It's for me,' he announced, grabbing it up, as his mother and Quincy arrived on the scene.

  'We weren't going to snatch it away,' Quincy retorted. 'It's been driving Mum mad all day—for heaven's sake, open it!'

  Nothing loath, Bobby attacked it and his mother squawked: 'Not like that! Come into the kitchen, I'll find some scissors for that string.'

  While Bobby danced impatiently around her she carefully snipped the string and then wound it into a neat little ball which she slid into her string drawer, rescuing the brown paper as Bobby began to disembowel the package in his brutal fashion, too eager to get at the contents to care how he did it.

  When the last wrapping fell away and the polystyrene box was unveiled Mrs Jones and Bobby gazed at it blankly—Quincy had long ago guessed what the package held. The address had been typewritten and there was no letter inside. The transistor had come anonymously as far as Bobby was concerned. Lifting it reverently out of its box, he gave a long happy sigh.

  'Oh, wow!'

  Mrs Jones looked at her daughter, her face flushed, her eyes very bright. 'You're a naughty, extravagant girl,' she said, and hugged her.

  'I didn't send it,' said Quincy, and Bobby detached his adoring gaze from the radio's shiny chrome dials.

  'Who's it from then? It's fab, absolutely terrific, it must have cost a bomb. I bet I could get Mars on it!'

  'Who sent it, then?' Mrs Jones asked.

  'Joe Aldonez, I expect,' Quincy admitted.

  Bobby lit up. 'Really? No kidding? Oh, wow!' he exclaimed, and extracted the enormous aerial which waved high above his head as he twiddled with the wavelength dial. 'Hey, I'm going to have a great time with this!' he informed them as he cuddled the radio against his ear and went off with it on his shoulder like some space age Long John Silver, the squawk of the radio fading with him as he vanished up the stairs.

  Mrs Jones was still thinking about what Quincy had told them. 'What makes you think Mr Aldonez sent it?'

  'He said he would.' She had forgotten, it had entirely slipped her mind since she came back from London, but Joe had not forgotten, he had kept his word.

  'Isn't that nice of him? Isn't he a kind man,' Mrs Jones said in delight. 'When you think how much he must have on his mind it's very thoughtful of him to remember Bobby.'

  'Yes,' said Quincy. 'Isn't it?'

  'We could never have bought Bobby such a splendid radio,' Mrs Jones went on. 'Bobby's right—it must have cost a fortune, it's very generous of Mr Aldonez. Bobby must write and thank him at once.' She went off to point this out to her son and Quincy stared out of the window at the gathering spring dusk, watching small powdery moths tapping at the lighted window, the brush of their wings insistent as they tried to penetrate the glass.

  A melancholy enveloped her and she sighed. She did not want any reminders of Joe around at the moment. She had put away her cherished LP until she felt she could bear to hear it again—maybe one day in the dim and distant future she might be able to listen to that smoky voice without wincing, but right now it would hurt too much.

  Over the following weeks she had to hear with patience the sight and sound of Bobby and his radio. They were never parted, and her only consolation was that she could always hear them coming and remove herself from the vicinity before they arrived.

  Bobby wrote a thank-you letter to Joe and sent it care of Carmen Lister in London. Presumably Carmen sent it on to America, but Bobby had no reply, not that that seemed to bother him much; however, it did nag away at Quincy whenever she stopped guarding her mind from thoughts of Joe.

  Her life had returned to normal, or what passed for normal, so far as everyone around her was concerned. The nine days' wonder of her trip to London over, people stopped talking endlessly about it, to her relief, and the subject was allowed to fall into abeyance. Quincy settled back to work in the surgery, she went for drives on a Sunday afternoon with Brendan and took walks with him through the local woods admiring the spring flood of bluebells which began to carpet the leafy moistness of the earth under the trees, filling the air with that special, poignant scent. Now and then they drove to the nearest cinema to
see a film or went dancing in the village hall on Saturday nights. Coming home late they would sit in the car and talk for a few moments before they kissed, and Quincy fought to hide from Brendan that his kiss hardly turned her on, her pulses never so much as fluttered.

  Wryly one evening he drew back and looked down at her. 'I'm wasting my time, aren't I?' he said. 'We just don't click.'

  'I'm sorry, Brendan,' she began, but he cut her short.

  'Don't say sorry, that would be adding insult to injury. If you can't feel any more than that, you can't, and there's an end to it. I don't want you apologising for it.'

  'Sorry,' she automatically mumbled again, then gave a nervous little giggle as she caught sight of his face. 'Oh, Brendan, I am—don't scowl like that.'

  'Was I?' he asked ruefully, giving a little shrug. 'Shall we call it a day?'

  'Friends?' she asked tentatively, holding out a hand.

  'Of course,' Brendan said, politely shaking it as though they had just been introduced.

  In her bed later Quincy got the gaggles again as she remembered that, but under the laughter she felt faintly sad. If she had never gone up to London, met Joe Aldonez, she might have taken Brendan far more seriously, allowed their quiet companionship to move into deeper waters without any sense of haste or strain. Now she had to admit it would never happen—she had changed too much during her brief stay in London, she would never be quite the same again. As with the end of anything, facing the reality of her break with Brendan saddened her and left her feeling slightly lost. Brendan had been a part of her life for the last five years, their friendship recently holding a hint of something else, and she knew she would miss their evenings together, their long walks at the weekend. It had hardly added up to deathless romance, it had been a cosy habit, nothing more—but she would miss it.

  As summer advanced towards its peak, the lanes grew creamy with wild parsley, which foamed in the ditches and clambered up the green banks, while the cuckoo sounded distantly across the fields, coming and going with that deceptive cunning which makes it seem invisible, a voice rather than a living bird. On warm, sunny days, Quincy went off with her father on his rounds if she could free herself from the paperwork of the practice, driving around the farflung district in which he worked, from farm to farm, from village to village; sometimes helping out when he needed a spare pair of hands to hold a calving cow, but often just going along for the ride, wandering off during his visits to explore a secret copse or feed an apple to a horse, or lie in the sun in a meadow watching the tiny black shadows of the larks singing high up in the halcyon sky.