Once

by Elisabeth Grace Foley et al.

  I waited for Max to raise his voice again, to reach out and grab the journalist by the collar. For my sake, my father would have done it without thinking. But Max did nothing of the kind. Instead, after a moment, he turned away from Phipps, wrenched open the car door, and got in.

  He didn’t say anything, just turned the key in the ignition and shot into the road. Neither of us spoke until he pulled up on Eely Point facing the lake, threw his elbow onto the back of the seat, and turned to look at me.

  The razor-sharp focus was back in his eyes, and a red five-fingered welt had developed on his face where I’d slapped him. I shifted uncomfortably. Eely Point is a lonely place, about midway between the town and the Lakeside Chalet, masked and shadowed with pines. “I thought you were taking me home.”

  “We need to talk.”

  I shrugged.

  “I offered Phipps a hundred pounds for the film from his camera,” he said after a short and bristling silence. “He wouldn’t give it up at any price. Said he had to think of his career.”

  I didn’t look at him. “Which paper is he with?”

  “He’s a freelancer. But he usually sells to the Dunedin Mirror.”

  “Oh, heavens,” I said under my breath.

  “There’s another way,” said Max. “I can go to court and get an injunction. You know what that is?”

  I shook my head.

  “That’s a court order to prevent him publishing the photographs. He’ll never be able to use them. There’s one catch.”

  I kept staring at the lake.

  “You need a good reason to get an injunction like that. Like the risk of serious financial or bodily harm.”

  It was a long time between breaths. At last I drew another and looked up at him. “Seems like I’ll have to bear with being plastered all over the Mirror, then. Will you take me back now?”

  He slammed both hands against the steering wheel. “By thunder, Ruby! If not that, then what’s got you spooked?”

  I should have known he was trouble. I should have left when he first came.

  “I don’t see what business it is of yours,” I said in a small and sullen voice. “Like I said, I’m willing to let it go. If you wanted to bully someone, you should have bullied Phipps. He was about to crack. All you had to do was push a little harder.”

  Max snorted. “What happened to ‘live and let live’?”

  A cheap shot. I didn’t answer.

  He sat silent, waiting.

  I went over my options. I could get out of the car and walk back to the Chalet, but that would take half an hour at least, and make me late for my shift. If I had to leave Pembroke I would need the money, and a good character reference to take with me.

  I said, “I’ve run away from home. I don’t want to be found.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s no one’s business but mine.”

  He pressed his lips together, but finally, grudgingly, he relaxed. “At least tell me that if these photographs go to print, I won’t be fishing your cold corpse out of the lake.”

  Once more the words conjured up yesterday’s cold, yesterday’s panic, so sharply I could nearly feel it in my bones. I managed a laugh. “Max, I don’t know what it’s like growing up in the mob, but that’s not something that happens to normal people.”

  He smiled, but there was a little puzzled crease between his eyebrows.

  “Okay, Max. It’s Dad. He’s got… well, he’s got definite ideas about how a girl should behave. If he finds out I’m a working girl at a hotel, or worse, a cabaret dancer, he’ll try to make me come home.”

  “He’d force you to leave Pembroke?”

  “No! Like I said, we’re not the mob. But he’d certainly come. And there’d be a scene. And there’d be relatives. And there’d be the fiancé.”

  “Fiancé?” He looked genuinely startled.

  “I…” I swallowed. “I left in a hurry. I just looked at it all one day, and I thought, this isn’t what I want.”

  “What do you want?”

  I wove my fingers into each other. It hurt, a little, to let anyone see the real Ruby underneath. “I’m saving up,” I murmured. “I want to go to Australia. A girl from my school lives in Melbourne now, and she’s offered to let me live with her. She’s on the stage, with the Opera. She says she can get me an audition. It would be a dream come true.”

  He watched me, his eyebrows canted up inquiringly. “That’s it? You don’t want to shock your family?”

  “That’s it.”

  “And they’ve no idea if you’re dead or alive.”

  I felt the blood mounting to my face. “I’m going to write as soon as I get to Melbourne. Far away from them. It’s just taking longer than I intended to get there, that’s all… Now won’t you take me back to the Chalet before I get fired for levanting with the guests?”

  He gave a perfunctory half smile and started the car again. He ran me directly to my cabin, shut off the engine, and said, “Ruby.”

  I looked back at him with one foot on the running board.

  “Come back to Dunedin with me,” he said. “The papers can take all the photos they like. And you can let your family know you’re all right. If they try to interfere with you, I’ll square them.”

  He was pushy and protective and sometimes I fancied I could hear him ticking ominously, the way a bomb does in the pictures. But in another life, if he had not been Max Moran, or if I had not been Ruby Black, he might have been my kind of fellow.

  And so it was hard to smile back at him and say, “I’m sorry, Max. You’re a little too plush for me.”

  He let out a tense breath, and suddenly I couldn’t help myself, and leaned over to peck him swiftly on the cheek. “Chin up, glamour boy!” Then I slid out of the car and ran into the cabin to yank on my uniform.

  The Lakeside Chalet is small, but terribly exclusive. The first owner had it built for the Swiss woman he married, and so it is a rich, colourful place, all honey-coloured wood and lovely carved furniture, cuckoo clocks and Persian rugs, four-poster beds and candle sconces. In cold weather there is a blazing fire in the common room, and in warm weather there is a green-tiled swimming pool.

  I ran into the kitchen still tying my apron strings. “What’s cooking, good looking?” I sang out.

  Hard at work slicing apples, Bunny Hopper strangled a snort of laughter. Nearer the door, Paora, the chef, glanced up with a flashing smile from a big rainbow trout which he was painting with oil. “Newlyweds in the Master Suite brought it in. Say they’ll have it for lunch. Nice one, aye.”

  Paora was a Maori from the North Island. Like many of that ancestry he was not tall but immensely stocky, with an accent you could stun a bull with.

  “Poor creature. Do you get rainbow trout in Rotorua?”

  “Nah, nothing lives in the water up there. Don’t put fish in the water up there unless you want it boiled.” He made an eloquent face. “It’s not like our lake, that’s for sure. That lake will put life into you. Why, the other day we were having a baptism—”

  Paora is a regular at St Columba’s and has a taste for miraculous stories. Ordinarily I would have been happy to hear him, but this was no ordinary morning. “Have you seen Bill this morning?”

  “Mr. Fisher? Yeah, he was looking for you.”

  “Crumbs, was he? Is he furious?”

  Paora shook his head. “Nah, it was about the man from the Mirror who came asking questions about you.”

  I put a hand to my head. “Phipps? Phipps was here?”

  “Phipps, that was his name.”

  “When? What happened?”

  “No fear.” Paora smiled reassuringly. “I knew what to do. I called Mr. Fisher. Mr. Fisher got rid of him.”

  “Oh, bless you, Paora. Bunny, I swear I’ll come back and help you.” I ran out the back door and clattered down the steps to where Bill Fisher lived under the chalet. It was a dark, cramped set of rooms—a kitchen, a bed sitter, an office. Bill was in the office, chewing his pencil over
a sheaf of receipts.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, rushing in the door. “I got delayed again—it wasn’t my fault, but Max insisted on stopping. It won’t happen again.”

  Bill lifted his eyebrows at me and pulled off his spectacles. “Bunny had to do your work in the kitchen.”

  I’d often thought Bill Fisher the nicest man in Pembroke. Lanky and dark and clever. I didn’t like to disappoint him. “I’m sorry, Bill. I’ll make it up to her.”

  He nodded. “So you’ve been going out with Max Moran.”

  To my surprise, my cheeks burned. “Yes, and I’ve already been hounded by the press. Paora said the journalist came around.”

  “Just now. I sent him away and told him not to come back.”

  “Thanks.” I cleared my throat. “Max—Mr. Moran already warned him away from me this morning. But he got photos.”

  “He’ll need copy to go with them,” Bill said. “He won’t get it here. I’ve warned the staff.”

  “That was sweet of you, but Pembroke’s so full of gossip. Bill, I wonder if I should go away. Just for a few days, till this blows over. I’ve given Max the flick, and he’s leaving in a couple of days anyway. But this journalist…”

  Bill was more than an employer; he was a friend. He knew that if I wanted to forego a paycheque it must be serious. But he twiddled his pencil between his fingers and grimaced. “We’re booked solid for the next two weeks, and apart from Moran, there’s a high turnaround. I’m sorry, but…”

  I gave a half-hearted smile. “No, I know.”

  “We’ll keep Phipps clear of you,” Bill promised, and I had to be content with that.

  Of course there was an article in the Mirror, and of course the photographs had developed beautifully. Bill came down to the cabin while I was warming up after my morning swim with hot coffee and scrambled eggs, and tossed the paper onto the table in front of me without a word.

  “Oh, dear,” I said.

  MORAN FINDS PEMBROKE BEAUTY TOO HOT TO HANDLE, the headline shrieked. It was a gossipy feature on my altercation with Max at Mount Iron yesterday morning, entirely overwhelming the other items on the page, a murder trial and a million-pound sale of pearls. “Oh What a Girl! Has Max Met His Match?” inquired the byline.

  The whole thing was gracefully illustrated with a shot of the two of us in the moment after I’d hit him. Max stood facing the camera foursquare, his face still screwed up from the slap. I was half turned away from him, my hand blurred with speed, my profile clear and furious.

  I felt a wild desire to laugh. Instead, my voice was hushed and a little awed. “Good night. Have you read this, Bill?”

  “I thought it was rather good.” There was a grin in his voice, if not on his face.

  “It really happened quite differently,” I said, skimming the text. “I wasn’t mad at him for being forward, I was mad at him for letting Phipps take those pictures. Oh, crumbs, it’s saying Max tried to suppress them.”

  “That part is true, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but he makes it sound like Max was embarrassed for his own sake.”

  “A lot of men would be embarrassed to see something like this in the paper.” Bill shoved his spectacles further up on his nose with a forefinger. “It’s hard enough working up the courage to speak to a girl if you like her, let alone being held up to national ridicule afterward.”

  I stared at him. “Oh, he’ll be furious.”

  “He’ll live.”

  If Max was so mortified, Bill bore it with great fortitude. I went back to the paper. “It’s all here, Bill. My name. The Chalet. The cabaret. Even the routine—If You Knew Ruby. Phipps must have found all this information in town.”

  I dropped the paper on the tabletop again and reached for my cooling coffee. Bill picked the paper up and folded it under his arm. “I know I told you to stay, Ruby, but if you really need to leave—”

  “What good would it do now? Phipps has had his pound of flesh, that should content him. And Max is leaving tomorrow.”

  “We can spare you if we have to.”

  There was a smudge of lipstick on the rim of my mug. I wiped it away with my thumb before replying.

  “Thanks, Bill, but not now. Let’s wait a bit, and see what happens.”

  III.

  I’m not sure exactly what I expected to happen next. Certainly not Ava Wu.

  She came into the chalet on Max’s arm that evening in furs and black satin and diamonds that flashed with each movement. Above that, her sleek blonde head glowed like candlelight, and in that moment I couldn’t help comparing her to the scholarship student she’d been when I first met her at Otago Girls’. She graduated five years ahead of me, but stayed on to teach music because her family could afford nothing better for her. It was Ava who’d given me my first singing lessons, and it was Ava who’d lost her position when I complained I needed a better teacher. They’d hired an aging opera singer and let Ava go. I remember as vividly as if it was yesterday the look on her face when they sent her away on a pony cart in the rain. But Ava’s story ended happily. Soon after she’d made that brilliant match, marrying one of the richest men in Dunedin.

  I had never asked her forgiveness, and sometimes the regret came back to gnaw on me.

  I caught a glimpse of her as I came out of the Master Suite, and had just enough presence of mind to whisk back inside the door as they crossed into the common room. While Max helped Ava off with her furs, I held my breath, not daring to move. Letting myself get involved with Max had been a mistake, and he didn’t even know me. How much more damage would it do to let Ava see me?

  “Thanks, darling,” said Ava and her voice gave me a little wistful twinge for the old days. “You were right. It is a charming place.”

  “The food is even better,” he promised. “Give me a moment.”

  I realised I had dropped my duster outside the door.

  Max headed off in the direction of the kitchen. Ava was sitting with her back to me. I stole out, snatched the duster, and then retreated through the Master Suite, going out by the French doors onto the terrace. Kat Johnson was there with one of the valets, frowning at a piece of paper.

  “Kat,” I said breathlessly, “I thought you were waiting tables this week. Mr. Moran’s just come in.”

  “Botheration,” Kat said, and thrust the paper at me. “Fine. You handle the poodle’s dinner.”

  She headed toward the kitchen, and I frowned at the paper. “What’s this, Jim?”

  “We’re out of chopped liver,” he said mournfully. “There’s nothing to feed the poodle in the Fountain Suite—and they were most particular about the little beast.”

  “Where’s Bill?”

  “Still in Oamaru seeing the accountant.”

  “Casey?”

  “He drove Monsieur and Madame Poodle into town to a restaurant. Frank took the newlyweds from the Master Suite.”

  Which meant that if Jim went to find chopped liver, only Paora would be left with us. “I suppose there’s no help for it. Bunny and Edie have already finished their shifts and Kat’s needed in the kitchen. The Roy farm will have liver. You’d better take the Ford.”

  Jim nodded, but he didn’t go straight to the garage. “You look exhausted, Ruby.”

  “Gosh, thanks.”

  “Not in a bad way. Just get an early night, will you?”

  “I’ve still got the upstairs suite to service and the common room to sweep. Don’t worry about me. Drive safe.”

  I waved him goodbye and followed in Kat’s steps around the front of the Chalet toward the kitchen. As I passed the front door, I noticed a man sitting in the back of Max’s Cadillac, reading a paper and chewing gum. From his cheap suit and his battered face I assumed he must be some sort of bodyguard, probably belonging to Ava. I kept my head down but as I passed him I felt his eyes on me.

  I was glad it was dark.

  I glanced through the window into the common room before I headed into the kitchen. Max and Ava seemed to be having a g
ood time with elderflower cordial and oysters—or as much of a good time as it was possible to have on elderflower cordial. I had another wistful twinge, and wondered if it could actually be jealousy. But I had had my chance with Max.

  The kitchen was full of good smells and a gust of words. Paora was beating sauce in a pan, telling one of his tall tales. “…and when she comes up, she walks back to shore. Ruby!” He greeted me without pausing for breath. “Mr. Moran was asking for you.”

  “Well, he’s not going to get me,” I said. “What did he want?”

  “Didn’t say. So back she goes to her doctor,” he said to Kat, “and he tells her there’s nothing wrong with her. ‘Doctor,’ she tells him, ‘it was living water.’ ”

  “I have to take orders,” said Kat, and fled through the swinging doors.

  “When was this?” I asked, hoping to distract him.

  “Just this past Sunday.”

  “Well, I hope it takes.”

  Kat came through the swinging doors into the kitchen and slapped a notepad down on the bench. “They aren’t staying for dinner,” she announced, “they decided to go into town.”

  Paora grinned. “Good! That means a five-star dinner for us. Take a seat, Ruby.”

  But as he spoke I heard Max’s voice in the hall saying “—try one more time.”

  “Not now,” I blurted. “I have to feed the poodle,” and I fled outside. But out in the cold evening air, I dropped to a crouch and pressed my ear against the door.

  “Is Ruby there?” Max.

  “She came through, but she didn’t stay,” Paora answered. “It sounded urgent.”

  Good old Paora!

  “That’s a shame,” Max said, and I could almost hear the little line between his eyebrows. “Thanks anyway.”

  A moment later I heard the front door open and the Cadillac’s engine started.

  I sat down on the doorstep, wrapped my arms around my knees, and shivered. Now that I had escaped them for a moment, I felt a whirr of panic. Why was Ava here? Was she looking for me? What was she doing with Max?