Season of Storm

by Alexandra Sellers

  "Not as much as I wish now," Smith said. All her experience of overseas markets would be wasted in her new job, but a little more attention to Europe's art and history would certainly have enriched her creativity.

  "Is this your last day?"

  "My last hour. Minute."

  "What are you going to do, or do you know yet?"

  "Song writing." She smiled. "And poetry. I intend to be a major addition to popular music, if not to Can Lit."

  "Well, we won't lose touch, will we? You'll be dropping in on Valerie?"

  "Of course," she said. "Give her my love—and the twins, too. Tell her I'll call her if she doesn't call me." At the door she stopped, struck by a sudden thought.

  "Rolly—I never asked you. Why didn't you ever tell the police about that phone call?" She turned, and his face was blank with surprise.

  "What phone call?"

  "When I was away on that trip I called you one afternoon, and then I changed my mind and hung up. Just as you answered. The police never mentioned it to me afterward."

  Rolly shook his head. "Sure you had the right number? I don't remember—or wait! Was that you? I thought that was Valerie, thought there was a problem with the babies. I phoned her and asked her if she'd called—one night just as I was about to leave the office."

  Then he goggled at her. "My God," he said softly. "Were you calling me for help? I didn't even think of you that day! I—"

  Great. Nothing like starting up another hare herself. "No, no, Rolly," she said hastily. "I was calling to ask how Valerie was, because I'd forgotten to tell her I was going to be away, and it took an age to get through, and by the time I did, everyone was ready to leave. That's all." She was babbling, and he was staring at her as if he knew she was lying.

  "Tell Valerie I'll be around to see her soon, okay?" She smiled and opened the door. "Oh, and listen—it's been great working with you!"

  And that was it. The company around which her life had revolved for eight years moved out of her consciousness as easily as that: she closed her office door and, carrying a heavy briefcase, walked down the hall, into the elevator and then out the front door without once looking back. It had been a chapter in her life. She was starting another.

  ***

  "You're in the news again," Lew observed as he followed her blue-jeaned, barefoot figure into her workroom. After the formality of years of office wear, going to work dressed like this was a luxury that was almost sinful.

  "Tell me about it," she responded dryly. She paused in the doorway. "There, what do you think?"

  Her father had a gardening service one day a week. This morning Smith had asked the gardener to help her shift the piano from the conservatory into this room, which she was rapidly turning into a working studio. One of the sofas had gone out, a desk moved in. There were papers and books and sheet music everywhere. She had been working hard, with the telephone silenced all afternoon.

  Lew whistled softly and approached the impressive baby grand piano. "Who plays this?" he asked.

  "No one," said Smith dryly. "It's my father's idea of style. I'll take it with me when I move, if you think it would be useful."

  Lew ran his fingers down the keys and winced at the tinkling sound. "It needs a bit of tuning." He bonged middle C and played a few chords. "He paid something for this, though. It's a beauty."

  "My father always gets the best," she said. "Want to look at what I've done?"

  "Of course."

  She brought him two songs she had been working on and one of the poems from the growing pile she was making. Lew moved back to the piano, reading. "Are you thinking of these for Cimarron?"

  Smith shrugged. "I was, but if you have a better idea…."

  "Nope. It's good by me."

  With that understanding they began to work. The excitement of working as a team was with both of them, and Smith might never get over the joy of doing this as a career. So they worked well, if not with the marvellous inspiration that had gripped them on their first attempt.

  Lew had some music he'd composed previously, and after they had worked with her lyrics for awhile, he played his own for her. Smith flung herself down in her favourite armchair and listened.

  The music was softer and sweeter than what he had written for "Wake Me Up to Say Goodbye," and Smith thought suddenly that it needed contradiction, it needed a lyric that would make the music an ironic comment.

  "This one makes me feel contrary," she said. Lew stopped playing.

  "It what?" he asked with a grin.

  "Well, it makes me think of lines like 'don't ask me to say I love you, there's no such thing as love,'" she expanded.

  Lew laughed. "That's good," he said. "I was half hoping you'd get that from it." He went back to playing. "Dah da dum da dum," he hummed and sang at intervals, "Dum there's no such thing...as love....Yeah," he said over the music. "That's good. Let's work around that...dum dum, 'cause there's no such thing as love."

  It was true, she was thinking suddenly. There was no such thing as love—if what she and Johnny had felt for each other wasn't love, then it must all be an illusion.

  She was scribbling odd notes and bits of lyric on a pad as she lounged in the chair. "Have you got a cassette of this?" she asked Lew.

  He kept playing. "I can make you one."

  "Yes, please." She flung down her notebook and noticed that the phone light was flashing for a call. It had been doing so at intervals all day, and she'd ignored it. But it was late now, this must be a friend. "What time is it?" she wondered aloud, stretching and looking at her watch. Ten o'clock. "News that comes at night can't be good," she observed to Lew, making a face as she crossed to the phone, but she wasn't thinking of her father. She was thinking of Johnny.

  "Are you watching the news? Turn on the news!" Valerie shrieked in her ear. "It was just on the headlines! CBC! They're saying you—"

  Smith dropped the receiver and dashed across the room, where, to Lew's obvious amazement, she began pushing and pulling at the knobs of an oak sideboard. Finally the doors opened to reveal a television screen, and Smith snatched up the remote control und snapped it on.

  When she found CBC, a reporter talking from Jerusalem was just finishing a story, and the anchorman's face appeared on the screen. "In Vancouver tonight," he said, "the revelation of a secret marriage between lumber heiress Shulamith St. John and the architect Johnny Winterhawk has caused red faces among the RCMP. From Vancouver, here's Susan Kalman."

  "Three weeks ago," said a pale young woman, "Shulamith St. John left the exclusive home she shares with her father, lumber baron Cordwainer St. John, and disappeared...." Smith closed her eyes helplessly and let the voice flow over her.

  "...City Hall records reveal that the couple took out the marriage licence during the week that RCMP officers were acting on the assumption that Miss St. John had been kidnapped. A witness at the wedding has told the CBC that the couple appeared very much in love and that Miss St. John was in no way constrained at the ceremony.

  "Shulamith St. John has repeatedly stressed that she was away voluntarily, but for reasons that have not been disclosed, and will probably remain forever locked in the breasts of the RCMP investigators...."

  When she had finished, the reporter's face was replaced with that of a woman police officer, standing in front of a cluster of mikes, taking the flak for Podborski. Nothing new there.

  Smith moved numbly to the phone and picked up the receiver. "Are you still there?'' she asked Valerie.

  "Smith, is it true? My God, is it true?"

  "Yes, it's true," she said, and was suddenly flooded with relief that the secret was out.

  "Everything?"

  "Yes—except his name is Wilfred Tall Tree, not William." She spoke distantly, because she couldn't concentrate on the conversation. She kept wondering if Johnny was watching this and what his reaction would be.

  And then she knew. Johnny's dark face suddenly filled the screen. "No comment," he was saying as if it were the fifth ti
me he had said it, and if no one else knew, Smith could see by the black glitter in his eyes that he was furious.

  "Do you have any comment about the police handling of the case?" the woman asked.

  Johnny looked bored, but he wasn't, he wasn't. "Sure I have a comment," he said. "It's been said before: 'the law's an ass.'"

  ***

  "It wasn't me!" Shulamith said urgently as Johnny Winterhawk opened the door and stood staring down at her. It was late. He was in a bathrobe, and his hair was tousled. She had got him out of bed.

  "Fine," he said. His face had the naked, bleak look she had seen before.

  "Why don't you believe me?"

  "Go home." He moved to close the door.

  Smith flung herself against him and pushed her way inside. "Don't you judge me without a hearing!" she stormed.

  "You've said what you came to say," Johnny spoke over her.

  "I have a right to be heard and I—"

  "Not by me."

  "Oh, yes, by you! I'm caught in this as much as you are, you know! I'm married to you as—"

  ''Be careful about claiming conjugal rights," he said softly, closing the door behind her. "I have conjugal rights of my own." And his arms came around her and he turned her head and bent to kiss her mouth.

  If the savage pressure of his lips could be called a kiss. How dared he kiss her in such an ugly mood, as though he were using it to punish her? Smith fought her way out of his embrace.

  "Look, Johnny," she said. "I was not the one who tipped off the CBC, but even if I was I wouldn't put up with sex as some kind of punishment!"

  Johnny showed his teeth, and pulled her body against him again.

  "Stop it! Let me go!" she shouted, fighting and pushing to get away. He let her go, and she heaved for breath. Her breasts strained against the thin cloth of her navy T-shirt, hard and aroused. He aroused her, there was no denying that. Even in this cruel, angry mood he aroused her.

  Smith put a hand out to keep him at bay. "So help me God," she whispered hoarsely, then cleared her throat, "so help me God, if you lay another finger on me in this mood, Johnny, I'll call the police and I will charge you with kidnapping!"

  He looked at her and laughed. But the laughter was without mirth, a mask for deep anger, and it chilled her blood.

  "You've denied it so often you'd hardly be a credible witness. Anyway, too late now. Didn't they tell you it would be too late?"

  There was a note in his voice that terrified her. "What do you mean?"

  "We got married, Shulamith, remember? Try convincing a jury that you were with me under duress when we went to pick up our licence and when we got married."

  And that was when she knew she loved him. When she was standing there, learning for the first time what she had never suspected: Johnny's love for her had been fake right from the beginning. He had been plotting a way out, that was all. Marriage had been his way out. She looked at him then, and knew that she loved him with all her heart and would love him all her life. And what she had gone through with her father was nothing compared to the agony life had chosen for her now.

  Thirty-one

  Smith stepped up against him and looked up into his face. His arms closed around her convulsively, and she smiled. He might not love her, but he still wanted her.

  "All right," she said. She closed her eyes. His closeness was making her faint, and now she knew why.

  Johnny's hands gripped her shoulders, and he looked down into her face. "All right?" he repeated.

  She said, "It'll be the last time, won't it? We won't need to see each other after this. Let's say goodbye the way we said hello."

  Then his hands were burning on her waist and denimed thighs as he swung her up into his arms. He turned and carried her up through the house all the way to his bedroom at the top. There was a fury in him that was almost frightening, and the fury grew as he walked.

  He set her on her feet inside the bedroom door and pressed her against it with a sudden kiss. Her hands were on his arms, caressing the hard muscle through the rough terry-cloth. His hands encircled her cheeks and throat, while his thumbs stroked her willing lips and then drew her face up to meet his kiss.

  As quickly as that, erotic need had her in its grip. When his tongue moved against her lips she trembled with the knowledge that it was his tongue, his mouth, when his hard arousal urged its presence against her, she knew that it was his body and no other that she ached for, and that it was from her body that he needed his own pleasure.

  He felt the trembling in her and opened her mouth in a hungry, consuming kiss that set her alight in a thousand places. Her hair fell loose under his fierce caress, and when at last he raised his head she was in flames. The belt of his robe had let go. Underneath it, he was naked.

  She was swept by a need she could scarcely name, then, and her eyes darkening, she sank slowly to her knees in front of him and pressed a kiss against his thigh.

  "Shulamith!" he hissed in sensuous surprise, and as she took him into her mouth, she heard the tortured intake of his breath. His flesh filled her mouth, her throat, her whole consciousness. His hands clenched in her hair, and he wrapped it around his body, ensnaring both of them in its glowing net.

  Then he let it fall, and she shivered as its weight brushed her naked arms. He drew back and picked her bodily off the floor, while she moaned her needy dismay, and carried her to the bed. There, he stripped off her jeans and T-shirt, and looked at the curve of her breasts through the wild disorder of her hair with a face that was tortured. "You destroy me," he whispered. "You take my soul."

  The black wings of his hair fell forward over the high bones of his cheeks, and behind his eyes the dark flame leapt. She saw every separate hair of his head, as familiar to her as time, and every glistening black lash. She put her hands up to his face. Yes, this is the curve of your lips, which I have always loved, she thought, and this is the texture of skin that only you have, and only I know. And this is the last time and the first time—this is all the times I would ever have known you, in one.

  He moved; and she felt the pleasure as deep as pain as his body found hers, and her heart twisted in her breast. "You could have loved me," she whispered, not knowing that tears stood in her eyes. "If the world had been different, you could have loved me."

  ***

  The coffee was hot and strong and Smith stirred sugar into hers to give her strength for what was to come. She wasn't whispering 'maybe' to herself this morning. She knew there were no more maybes. She made a little noise of self-mockery, and Johnny's eyes met hers over the breakfast table.

  "Did you know it was going to come out?" she asked.

  "No. I didn't know anything till they nailed me for a quote."

  "They didn't get to me for a quote," she said. "I was working and turned the phone off for most of the day. I didn't know a thing till I saw the ten o'clock news." She glanced at him over the rim of her cup. "Do you believe me, Johnny?"

  "Of course I believe you."

  "You didn't seem to last night."

  "Last night I was angry, and I was also half asleep."

  "Well, I've just remembered that they said something about a witness at the wedding. I bet that's who outed us—one of the witnesses."

  His head jerked in a nod.

  She smiled sadly. "Look on the bright side, Johnny. At least you've got the cops off your back."

  He didn't answer that. "How's it going at St. John's Wood?"

  "Oh, you don't know! I quit my job, I'm writing full time now!"

  He smiled and raised his eyebrows at her over his cup. "Congratulations! You're moving fast."

  "I wrote a song about us," she said brightly, just as though her heart wasn't breaking. "Would you like to hear it?"

  There was a momentary pause. "All right," he said.

  She sang it with a smile, and her scratchy voice was somehow right in that bright sunny kitchen overlooking the gorge on a summer day.

  "There seems to be so much to give all t
hrough the night...I won't ask for any more, please wake me up to say goodbye 'cause now it's over."

  His eyes were unreadable, but he smiled. "You seem to have hit expert status pretty quickly," he said.

  "I didn't do the music, that's by—Do you remember what I told you about the boy up at Paper Creek? Well, I met him again. He's a composer now. He did the music."

  Johnny nodded, but his eyes were on the coffee pot as he reached for it and topped up their cups. "You make a great team, it seems."

  "'Wake Me Up to Say Goodbye' is going to be recorded very soon. And you're right, Lew and I are a team. We're collaborating on other songs."

  "Congratulations," said Johnny. He stood up, and she took it as her dismissal.

  "I guess you've got to get to the office," she said. She drained her cup. "I have to go, too."

  "Thanks for waking me up to say goodbye."

  Smith laughed, to ease the terrible grip of tears on her throat. "Oh, well, I had to, didn't I? When the song gets famous—did I tell you it's being recorded by a woman named Cimarron? We're going to make each other famous—I'll probably have to wake up every lover to say goodbye in the future, or they'll complain!"

  He didn't laugh with her. He didn't frown, either. He didn't do anything except look at her. "You foresee a lot of lovers in your future?"

  "Oh, well," she said, "People in the arts always have lots of lovers, don't they?"

  "I guess they do."

  She didn't know what she was saying. Anything that would keep the tears at bay and the terrible knowledge that this was the end. It must be the end.

  "I guess we can split the cost of the divorce," she babbled as they walked down through the trees and onto the dock in the bright sunshine. "I haven't talked to a lawyer yet, but I think it's either one or three years of living apart, isn't it? I should find out about annulment, too "

  The little motorboat she had rented was bobbing on the gentle swell. Smith turned. "Well, goodbye, Johnny," she said, and for all her determination her voice caught in her throat.