Room Beneath the Stairs

by Wilde, Jennifer;

  “You’ve been to the mainland, haven’t you?” he remarked.

  “What if I have?” Grey replied defiantly, his cheeks flushing.

  “You’re not supposed to go there, are you?”

  “Leave me alone, Evan.”

  “You weren’t supposed to come to the caves either.”

  Grey started to say something but bit it back, his moment of defiance gone. The cowed look returned, and for a moment I thought he was going to burst into tears. His gray eyes were the eyes of a disobedient child, filled with apprehension.

  “Get back to the house,” Evan said. “I’ll deal with you later.”

  “I’ve gotta take Carolyn back—”

  “Do as I say!”

  Grey gave me a miserable look and lifted one hand in a pathetic, futile gesture. Again he started to say something, but instead he turned and walked away, eyes downcast, shoulders sagging. In a moment he disappeared around one of the boulders. I was alone with Evan Porter. He studied me with a faintly amused, mocking expression, as though I were some kind of oddity. I glared back at him, not at all intimidated.

  “I think you’re wretched!” I snapped.

  “Really?”

  “I’m not afraid of you!”

  “No reason why you should be,” he replied in a lazy drawl. “I take it you live on the mainland?”

  “That’s none of your business,” I said spitefully.

  “It is, unless you plan to swim back. What’s your name?”

  “I’m not going to tell you.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You’re a scrappy little thing, aren’t you?”

  “Leave me alone!”

  “I’d love to, but unfortunately the boat seems to be your only means of getting back home. I’ll have to take you.”

  “I won’t go with you,” I retorted. It was sheer bravado. I knew I was at his mercy, and it was humiliating.

  Evan Porter shook his head, sighed and straightened up. He had been leaning against the rock all this time. He came toward me. I backed away defiantly. He smiled, his dark brown eyes filled with sardonic amusement. He reached for my arm. I kicked his shin, although it wasn’t very effective with my bare foot. He scooped me up into his arms and carried me toward the water. I struggled violently, but he didn’t even seem to notice. We moved through the water and, one arm clutching me against his chest, he swung up the ladder and dumped me unceremoniously into the boat.

  I huddled in the corner, thoroughly miserable. He started the motor. It roared loudly, and the small boat was skimming rapidly over the water. Evan stood at the helm, his back to me, his black hair flying about his head. Salty spray splattered me, and I had to hold on to the side of the boat to keep from being tossed about as the bottom thumped and skidded over the waves. I could see the mainland now, glittering brightly in afternoon sunlight. The island was behind us, gradually diminishing in size.

  Evan slowed and cut the motor. The boat rocked, several yards from shore. Brushing a wave of hair from his forehead, he turned to me, his brown eyes flat and bored.

  “Out,” he said. “I imagine you can make it to land without my assistance.”

  “How deep is the water?”

  “Not more than three or four feet.”

  “Very well. I hope you crash up on the rocks on your way back.”

  “Out, brat, and tell your mother to take better care of you. Don’t ever let me catch you on the island again.”

  Cheeks hot with anger and humiliation, I climbed over the side of the launch and into the water, curbing an impulse to stick my tongue out at him. My dress belled out around me. The bottom was slippery and muddy to my bare feet. I trudged through the water, feeling his eyes on me as I progressed. My feet slipped out from under me as I reached land. I fell flat on my face and a wave swept over me. I heard Evan Porter’s laughter and then the sound of the motor starting. By the time I had climbed to my feet, the launch was already speeding back toward the island.

  Every day for the rest of that summer, I went back to my secret cove, but Grey never showed up. For hours I sat on the warm rocks, sunlight spilling around me, watching the water for a sign of the rowboat. It never appeared. I was filled with sadness, my loneliness greater than ever now. At the beginning of September I was sent away to boarding school, and I discovered the joys of learning. I made many friends, and I changed completely, for I was no longer lonely, no longer an outsider. My aunt died. I spent my holidays with friends and never returned to the coast. I grew up. Sometimes I took out that delicate pink and orange shell I had picked up that August day so long ago and examined it with a pensive smile, remembering Grey Brandon and wondering what had become of him. Thirteen years were to pass before I saw him again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Beyond the book-piled tables, through the misty windowpanes of the small, cozy shop wedged in between a respectable law office and a leather goods store, I could see the bleak, gray-hued afternoon. People hurried past with heads lowered: men in mackintoshes, furled umbrellas swinging; women in tweeds, dragging irritable children along after them. No one paused to peer at my carefully arranged displays. The bell over the door never once tinkled. No one stepped inside out of the damp to browse among the books. Business wasn’t slow: it was nonexistent. I hadn’t made a single sale all day, although an elderly woman had come in earlier to inquire about one of Beverly Nichols’s charming country studies, which, unfortunately, was out of stock.

  People weren’t buying books, and if business didn’t pick up soon the owner was likely to sack me and find a less dreamy, more aggressive clerk. He left me in complete charge of the shop, stopping in two or three times a week to look over the accounts and snoop about for signs of inefficiency. I knew he was displeased with me, but I simply couldn’t pressure anyone into purchasing a book he didn’t want. I was friendly and warm, chatting pleasantly; and people liked me, but they usually left empty-handed. I wasn’t dynamic. I wasn’t brisk and efficient and bright like so many of my contemporaries in their chic dresses and boots. I loathed trendy clothes. I preferred Beethoven to rock. At twenty-four, I had never smoked grass, had never had an affair or publicly protested against anything. I’d never even been to a discotheque. I was, in fact, a throwback to a less supercharged, more leisurely era. I deplored the expression “an old-fashioned girl,” but it happened to apply. There was little demand for old-fashioned girls in today’s London as I well knew.

  I was intelligent—in fact my I.Q. was frightfully high—but I had been a desultory student, following my own bent and acquiring vast stores of perfectly useless knowledge about things like Victorian literature and Etruscan art. After taking my degree, I found myself at a particularly distressing crossroads. Teaching was out of the question. The thought of standing before a pack of neatly uniformed bright-eyed children was appalling. But with funds running low and no steady employment in the offing, I had taken a secretarial course. Even though I’d graduated at the bottom of the class, I had managed to land a job in the typing pool of one of the big brokerage firms. What ensued could only be called disastrous. In a short time I was again among the swelling ranks of the unemployed. I’d been working at the book shop for four months now, and the owner had examined me with dubious eyes the last time he’d come in. I had no idea what I would do when this fell through.

  Ellie, my roommate, had the perfect solution. She was a pert, vivacious creature with long, tawny gold hair and enormous velvety brown eyes—a model in constant demand. We shared a drafty, crowded flat near Covent Garden in perfect harmony, two utterly opposite types who got along like the closest of sisters. She put up with my forgetfulness and dreamy moods and halfhearted housekeeping, and I tolerated her late hours and Bohemian friends and incessant gaiety. Ellie and I had gone to boarding school together and had remained close friends ever since. While I had dawdled through the groves of academe, she had pursued a modeling career with considerable success. Though her face frequently adorned the placards in the Underground, though she had app
eared on the telly a number of times to laud the virtues of soap or beer or a new line of orthopedic hosiery, she was completely unaffected; a blithe, merry spirit with swarms of male admirers.

  “Get married,” she told me bluntly.

  “Don’t be absurd,” I retorted.

  “Caro, luv, what else is there for you to do? You can’t work in a book shop for the rest of your life, particularly on the salary that miser pays you. No, a nice, rich, cozy husband is the only solution. We’ll have to work on it.”

  “I’m not interested in marriage.”

  “Of course you are. You’re not cut out to be a career girl, pet, and that’s putting it mildly. You could have any man you wanted, you know. They find you ever so intriguing—that glorious chestnut hair, that dreamy expression in those violet-blue eyes. You’re a smashing looker, like a pre-Raphaelite maiden in modern dress. All the lads are constantly after me to arrange something. I don’t know why you’re so obstinate.”

  I smiled indulgently. Ellie was forever trying to match me up with one of her “mates.” Ellie’s lads were a lively lot, spectacular-looking, most of them, and very with it, but I could never take any of them seriously. Fashionably dressed, frequently wealthy, they seemed to me a pack of rowdy, amusing children. Their interest in me was flattering, of course, and it was nice to know they thought me attractive, but I found them much too immature for my taste. They were jolly, and I enjoyed them when they flooded the flat at one of Ellie’s impromptu parties, but handsome swingers were definitely not my cup of tea. I was interested in a sturdier, more substantial type.

  “Reggie’s mad for you,” Ellie continued. “He’s shockingly rich, and he’s the only man I know who actually looks like Alan Bates. You could have him like that.” She snapped her fingers emphatically.

  “Not interested,” I replied calmly. “I do wish you’d stop trying to play matchmaker, Ellie.”

  “Someone needs to, pet. You haven’t done all that well on your own, you know. You let Allen Brown slip through your fingers, and he was pining to marry you.”

  I shook my head. Allen Brown was a terribly clean-cut young man whom I had dated for several months. He had just taken his law degree and joined an old, established firm in the city. Conservative, sober, he was very dedicated; he intended to make his name in politics. He was substantial, all right, without a touch of frivolity in his makeup, but he was also something of a chauvinist. He made it quite clear what role a wife would play in his life, and I simply couldn’t see myself sitting humbly in the background, typing his speeches and entertaining his constituents and feeding his ego. Allen was crestfallen when I turned him down, but I felt I had made a narrow escape.

  “Allen will probably be prime minister one day,” Ellie said bitterly.

  “No doubt about it.”

  “Granted he was a bit of a bore, but he had such clean-cut good looks and.…” She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head, her tawny locks swirling about her shoulders. “Some lucky girl is going to snap him up. I suppose you’re waiting for Mister Right.”

  “Precisely,” I said blithely.

  “But, darling, what if he doesn’t show?”

  “Don’t worry. He will.”

  I wasn’t all that confident, really, but neither was I too concerned. When the inevitable dismissal came, I would find another job of some sort; I would continue to drift along in a state of rather placid contentment. I enjoyed life. I loved to read, go to an occasional concert, stroll through the old streets of London, browse through the antique shops, look at the old houses that still existed on tree-lined back streets and shady squares. There were so many things to marvel at, to enjoy. I felt sorry for the surly, dissatisfied young people who seemed to have been born blind to the wonders around them. I found pleasure in the simplest things: a flower, a child playing in the park, pigeons cooing on a window ledge, a sky amethyst blue at twilight. On occasion I felt guilty because I wasn’t committed, wasn’t passionately dedicated to some major cause; but usually I was content to leave dedication to Allen and his ilk. They could change the world. I would go on enjoying it.

  An ominous rumble of thunder brought me out of my reverie. Although it was only midafternoon, the sky was dark, filled with rolling black clouds, and the street outside was etched in gray. I turned on a few lamps. They spread a warm golden glow over the shop and, incidentally, showed up all the dust I had managed to ignore for some time. Moving a pile of old prints to the other end of the counter, I resigned myself to a little house cleaning. But first I would have another cup of coffee. I kept a tarnished silver percolator and two chipped blue cups on a shelf behind my stool. I poured myself a cup and sipped it slowly, leaning on the counter and peering out at the street.

  People hurried along nervously as another threatening rumble sounded. Umbrellas suddenly bloomed up and down the street like giant black and brown mushrooms. The front windows rattled. A flash of lightning illuminated everything silver blue. Great raindrops began to fall. A man in a yellow mackintosh waved frantically at a passing cab. The cabbie ignored him, cruising on down the street. Mackintosh flapping in the wind, the man shook his fist, a fierce expression on his face. Sheets of rain obliterated everything. The world outside became a wet, swirling gray mass. Rain lashed against the windows, splattered noisily on the sidewalks. I sipped my coffee, feeling snug and cozy inside.

  The door burst open with a loud clatter and the bell above it rang frenziedly. Gusts of rain-laden wind soared into the shop as a man in brown struggled to shut the door against it. He finally succeeded, turning around to gaze at me with a triumphant smile. Dark blond hair clung to his head in damp tendrils. Droplets of water slid down his amiable tanned face. His deep gray eyes were filled with amusement, as though this were all a grand lark.

  I recognized him immediately. One couldn’t mistake those eyes, that blond hair. I stared at him in stunned surprise, that day thirteen years before coming back to me vividly. Grey Brandon would be twenty-six years old now. He was of medium height, perhaps five feet seven, with a hard, muscular build that just missed being stocky. The tight brown sweater emphasized his chest and the wide expanse of his shoulders. He exuded an animal vitality combined with a curious childlike charm, that same affable, nonchalant warmth I had noticed that day at the cove so many years ago. Grey Brandon reminded me of a soccer player with a choirboy’s face. I continued to gaze at him, completely at a loss for words.

  “Afternoon,” he said pleasantly. “Some weather we’re having, eh? I guess I startled you.”

  “Uh—yes,” I replied.

  “Thought I’d pop in until it lets up a little. You mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Hey, this is a bookstore, isn’t it? Didn’t notice before. Guess I ought to buy something while I’m waiting. Never read myself, but I could send something to Carlotta. She’d appreciate it.”

  “I suggest you stand over by the stove for a few minutes and let yourself dry off,” I said, as calmly as I could. “You’re wringing wet.”

  “Good idea,” he agreed, moving over in front of the old-fashioned potbellied black stove that roared in the corner near the end of the counter. He held his hands out, warming them, and turned his head to one side to gaze at me with friendly eyes. We were completely isolated from the rest of the world, cut off by the sheets of swirling rain. It was a highly intimate situation, uncomfortably so. I found myself wishing the sun were shining and there were other customers in the shop. I also found myself wondering about Carlotta. Was he married? I looked at his hand to see if he wore a wedding band. He didn’t.

  Grey Brandon noticed my observation. He grinned. He wasn’t altogether unaware of his own magnetism. A great many women must have glanced at that hand for the same reason I had just done. I fought back a blush and busied myself with a stack of papers in front of me, but I could see that he was looking at me in an entirely different way now, those deep gray eyes full of the all-too-familiar masculine speculation. I tried to appear indiffe
rent, but my hands were trembling visibly. He nodded his head ever so slightly, confident that I wasn’t immune to his charms. Few women would have been.

  “I know this is going to sound like a line,” he remarked, “but—haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

  “Have you?” I inquired.

  “I keep racking my brain. You look familiar somehow, but I can’t seem to place you. I’ve been in London only a couple of weeks. Could I have met you at a party?”

  “I think not. I don’t go to many parties.”

  “Guess I was mistaken,” he said, frowning.

  I wasn’t about to remind him of that day thirteen years ago. Although it had been very important to me, making a deep impression that had lasted all these years, he must have forgotten all about it in a matter of days. And I had changed far more than he had. He would never identify me with that skinny, defiant little girl who had so longed for a friend. Even now I could remember the anguish I had experienced as I waited and waited in vain that last hot summer on the coast.

  “Your name’s Carolyn, isn’t it?”

  “Why—yes. How did you know?” Had he remembered after all?

  The grin widened. He pointed to the slender wooden bar resting on the counter beside the ancient green cash register, on which MISS CAROLYN DAWSON was printed in dull gold letters.

  “I’m Grey. Grey Brandon. Named after Greycliff Island, but I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of it. Few people have in this part of the country. It’s on the Cornish coast, famous for its fishing and the handmade lace the women produce.”

  “Fascinating,” I remarked dryly.

  “You’re very attractive, Miss Carolyn Dawson.”