by Flora Kidd
'Oh God,' she muttered suddenly, holding a slender white hand to her forehead as if she had a pain there. Several rings glittered on her long fingers. 'This is far worse than I'd expected. I'd no idea you'd be like you are. I thought you'd be… er…'
'A hard-faced sex kitten,' Helen supplied with a little smile.
'Well, yes.'
'That's what Magnus said too.'
'I'd no idea you'd be so young and fresh-looking, so innocent.' Wanda gulped at her drink. 'How old are you exactly?'
'Twenty-two—almost twenty-three. Actually I look younger than I am,' said Helen.
'Yes, you do. It's your perfect complexion and the way you wear your hair, I suppose,' murmured Wanda, and shook her head from side to side, 'Oh, my dear, why?' she went on. 'Why go for a married man who has a daughter who's half your age? Couldn't you find someone younger, someone who's single? I've no intention of giving Blair up, you know, just so that you can marry him.'
'I… I don't want you to give him up,' whispered Helen. 'I don't want to marry him. I… well, the truth is it was all his idea—marriage, I mean. He said… or he's kept on saying… that as soon as he could get a divorce from you he would be free to marry me.'
'I see.' Wanda leaned back in her chair, her rather full lips curving into a cynical smile. 'He says that to all the girls,' she said dryly. 'It's his great line, his way of intriguing them, you could call it, holding their interest in him.'
'I… Mrs Calder, I want you to know I wouldn't have gone out with him, continued to see him all these past months if… if he hadn't said his marriage to you was a farce and that he hoped to end it. Honestly, I wouldn't.'
'You were sorry for him?' asked Wanda.
'Yes, I suppose I was.'
'You're not the first, but I'm going to make damn sure you're the last,' said Wanda, her voice hardening. 'That's why I'm here and why I'm staying. I love Blair and I know he loves me, and I've told him I won't let him divorce me. So leave him alone, Helen Melrose, stay away from him!'
'Oh, I will, I will. I have every intention of doing that,' said Helen quickly. 'But the question is, will he leave me alone, will he stay away from me? Did you know he came to see me yesterday?'
'When?' demanded Wanda, looking very puzzled.
'Soon after I'd returned from… from Carroch. He told me you had come and were staying at his house and he said he was sure you would go away soon and that he would be able to wear you down, get you to agree to a divorce, and that we had only to be patient…'
'Did you believe him?' demanded Wanda.
'I… no, not any more. And I told him that I don't want to marry him even if he does get a divorce. I told him to go away and leave me alone, but he wouldn't believe me. The only way I could get rid of him was to threaten to phone you and tell you he was harassing me.'
Wanda stared for a moment, blankly, as she absorbed what Helen had said, then her blue eyes began to twinkle and she put back her head and laughed.
'Oh, this is priceless!' she spluttered after a while as she dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. 'It's so funny, when you stop to think about it.' She sobered and looked across at Helen. 'But I hope you've learned something and haven't been too hurt in the process, Helen. Blair is… well, I suppose you could call him an habitual philanderer. He can't help flirting with any pretty woman that he comes into contact with: nurses, women doctors, sometimes patients. He does it, I realise, because he's not sure of me; because he can't be sure I'm not flirting with the men I meet in the course of following my career. He does it to get my attention, and it never fails.'
'That's what Magnus said,' agreed Helen.
'Ah, yes, Magnus.' Wanda's eyes narrowed as she studied Helen's face first, then looked at the brown paper parcel. She pulled the parcel towards her and slipped the string off it and opened it. 'Yes, these are mine,' she said thoughtfully, lifting each garment in turn. 'I usually leave a few clothes in my closet at Carroch Castle so that I don't have to carry much with me when I'm going there.' She looked across at Helen again. 'Are you going to tell me what you were doing at Carroch?'
'Magnus enticed me to go there.'
'Enticed you?' exclaimed Wanda. 'Good grief! Why did he do that?'
'He said that you'd asked him to help you by preventing me from going away with Blair for the weekend so that you'd be sure of finding Blair at home when you went to see him.'
'Mmm, I think I did say something like that. You see, I knew… at least, I'd found out that both you and Blair had the weekend free and Blair's housekeeper had told me he planned to go to the Trossachs, and I suspected you might be going with him. And Magnus did say he'd do something about it' Wanda's eyes began to dance with amusement again. 'What did he do? Please tell me.'
'Magnus asked me not to tell anyone,' Helen began hesitantly.
'You can tell me,' said Wanda persuasively. 'You have to now that I know you've been on Carroch with him.'
Helen explained quickly, starting with the telephone call she had received on Friday morning and ending with leaving Magnus at Glasgow Airport. She spoke quickly and concisely without any reference to her personal relationship with Magnus.
'Oh, how like Magnus to do something like that!' said Wanda with a sigh. 'He could have got himself into serious trouble, impersonating Blair and then making you stay with him on Carroch. I hope you're not going to lay any charges of abduction against him, Helen.' Wanda looked suddenly very anxious.
'No, I'm not. They wouldn't stick if I did. I went to Carroch willingly, thinking Blair had invited me and it was the bad weather on Friday night that made it impossible to get away then.'
'But you could have left Saturday even after you'd been swamped in the dinghy. You could have left with Max and the others, wearing my clothes since you'd lost your own. Why didn't you?' asked Wanda.
'I… it just didn't turn out that way. I… I was asleep when they left,' mumbled Helen, unable to sustain the shrewd regard of Wanda's blue eyes. 'I… I had to wait until Magnus wanted to leave to bring me to the mainland in the motorboat,' she added rather lamely.
'Do you know where he was going when you left him at the airport?' asked Wanda.
'He said he was going to Rome.'
'Well, that's something good that's come out of this latest escapade of his,' said Wanda. 'We… that is, my mother and I… were beginning to think he'd become a recluse, and that he would never leave Carroch and go back to acting in films again. He's been there for over three months, you know.'
'No, I didn't know. He didn't say how long he'd been there,' replied Helen. 'Why did you think he would never go back to acting in films?'
'Because he kept saying he was fed up with the whole business,' said Wanda. 'He had a pretty bad experience when he was in Hollywood. It concerned a woman, of course.' Her mouth twisted wryly. 'But I was really shocked to find out what a state he was in when I went over to Carroch a few weeks ago to see him. He'd been brooding and drinking and was in the foulest of moods. That's why I told him about Blair and you and asked for his advice and help. I thought it would take his mind off his own trouble.'
'What sort of trouble was it? What happened to him in Hollywood?'
'I can see you don't keep up with the gossip in the movie magazines,' remarked Wanda dryly.
'No, I don't. I rarely see one.'
'But you know, I suppose, that Magnus was making quite a name for himself in films.'
'Yes, I've seen one of the films he's been in.'
'Well, perhaps you don't know that with that sort of success you have to put up with a lot of exposure of your private life, not so much in this country where the public tends to respect privacy but certainly in the States and especially in Hollywood, and ever since he went there, under contract to make several films for Fiedler Films, Magnus has suffered from too much publicity. Everything he's done, every date he's made with a woman has received publicity. It's all been part of the build-up of his image as a romantic leading actor. All Fiedler's doing, of course.
Max Fiedler knows how to market the goods he has for sale better than anyone.' The twist to Wanda's lips was even more cynical. 'Anyway, to cut it short, last December an actress was found dead from an overdose of some drug in her Hollywood apartment. Magnus had been very friendly with her.' Wanda paused to finish her drink, then added, 'She left a note, unfortunately. It implied that Magnus had dumped her and she hadn't been able to take it.'
'Had he?' whispered Helen.
'At the inquiry into the cause of her death he said that he'd been only friends with her and nothing else, but the coroner didn't believe him— accused him of seducing the woman before leaving her and said he was to blame for her suicide.
Magnus lost his temper and told the coroner what he thought of him, implying that the coroner was using the inquiry to get publicity for himself by criticising the behaviour of a well-known film actor. The coroner blew his top and charged Magnus with slander. There was a trial, Magnus was found guilty of slander, was fined heavily and refused to pay the fine and was put in jail.'
'Oh, no!' gasped Helen. 'Oh, how foolish of him!
'You can say that again, but Magnus is like that, impulsively quixotic, and yet I have to admire him for standing up for what he believes to be right and for attacking what he believes to be wrong.'
'How long was he in jail?'
'Not long. Max Fiedler paid the fine and got him out and sent him home to cool his heels. Magnus went to Carroch.' Wanda sighed. 'It's taken him a long time to get over it. He really let the whole business get to him, almost as if he had begun to believe he was responsible for the woman's death or as if he could have prevented it if he hadn't been away from Hollywood at the time.'
'Do you think he was responsible?'
'Good grief, no! Not at all. Magnus would never treat a woman so badly that she would take her own life—at least not deliberately, not knowingly. But he's always had problems with women. The image of the romantic hero of the movie screen has attracted them to him like bees to honey, yet I don't think he's ever met one who has loved him for himself, who's fallen for the real Magnus.'
'Is there a real Magnus?' asked Helen.
'Of course there is, and I suspect you met him on Carroch,' replied Wanda, giving Helen a direct, shrewd stare. 'How did you get on with him?'
'I'm not sure. We argued a lot at first,' replied Helen, wishing there was some way she could control her colour. Her cheeks were burning. 'He said I deflated his oversized ego.'
'Ha!' Wanda laughed delightedly. 'Good for you! I suspect he would like you, Helen. He'd find you a refreshing change from the women who butter him up all the time and expect too much from him or who try to possess him. Did you like him?'
Helen didn't reply to that immediately. 'Like' seemed too weak a word to describe her feelings with regard to Magnus.
'Not all the time,' she said at last. 'There were moments when I disliked him intensely.'
'Mmm. Sounds interesting,' drawled Wanda, her eyes beginning to twinkle again. 'But I must go.' She picked up the parcel and rose to her feet. 'Blair will be home soon and I want to be there when he arrives.' Her smile was self-mocking, giving her a fleeting resemblance to Magnus. 'I've turned over a new leaf,' she added. 'From now on I'm going to be a good wife. I've done what I had to do. I've done my thing as a performer and now I'm ready to settle down and devote myself to Blair and Ailsa—I might even have another child. Who knows?'
'Are you going to tell Blair I was with Magnus at the weekend?' Helen asked anxiously as she walked with Wanda through the foyer of the hotel.
'I might. It would be a good way of putting an end to his infatuation with you if he knew that you'd spent a night and a day with his notorious half-brother-in-law. He'd be so miffed thinking you preferred to be with Magnus than to be with him that he wouldn't have anything to do with you again. And that's what we both want, isn't it, Helen?'
'I suppose it is,' muttered Helen as she followed Wanda through the revolving door and out on to the broad stone front steps. Beyond the expanse of green grass that sloped down to the edge of the water the small racing boats were sailing towards an orange marker buoy, tilting over as the wind which had increased filled their shining sails.
'But don't worry, I'll only tell Blair if I find it's necessary,' said Wanda. 'And if I do tell him, I'll swear him to secrecy. Now can I give you a lift to your flat?'
'No thanks, I'll walk. It's not far.'
'Then thanks for returning my clothes to me, and thanks for being…' Wanda paused, then added with a winning smile, 'Just thanks for being you, Helen. Goodbye for now. I'm sure we're going to meet again sooner or later.'
Whether Wanda found it necessary to tell Blair that Helen had spent part of the weekend on the island of Carroch with Magnus Helen herself never knew, but during the next few days she noticed that Blair made no contact with her, and it was with a sense of relief that she heard at the beginning of the following week that he had gone away on an extended vacation and that there were rumours that he would be leaving Glencross and setting up a practice in the London area. Wanda, it seemed, had got her own way in the end.
June went out in a blaze of beautiful weather and at the end of the first week of July Helen was able to take her own annual holiday. Glad to get away for a while, hoping that staying with her parents and meeting old friends and acquaintances would enable her to recover her badly disturbed equilibrium, she drove down to Kilford, the small seaside resort on the Solway Firth where her parents had always spent the months of July and August in the stone cottage they had bought and renovated.
Everything in Kilford was the same as it had always been. The tide still went out from the river estuary as if someone had removed a plug from a drain, leaving exposed banks of shining brown mud for several hours and then returned just as swiftly and silently to cover the banks with smooth shining water. The cottage owned by Janet and William Melrose looked as always neat and white on its green hillock overlooking the old pier where, in the past, small freighters had tied up to load granite from the nearby quarry and fishing boats had found shelter, but which was now only used by members of the local sailing club as a park for their dinghies.
The people who came to Kilford every summer for their holidays were also the same, and at first Helen went about with her friends, crewing regularly for Bob Cairns, whom she had known for years and who had just finished his training to be an architect and was hoping to be employed by her father's firm. With Bob she went out every evening of the first week to the sailing club or the local pub to discuss the day's sailing with other sailors. She went on picnics and other outings, but by the beginning of the second week she realised her heart wasn't in what she was doing. Her heart was in the Highlands, on an island called Carroch, where she had lost it to a man called Magnus.
It was easy to pretend she was happy and contented with her lot during the daytime, but the nights were bad, very bad, as she spent many hours thinking about Magnus and wishing over and over again that she could meet him again, and failing to find an answer to her wish. She couldn't go to Italy and find out where he was filming and walk in on him. She couldn't chase him, not only because she guessed he didn't like being chased by a woman but also because her own pride wouldn't let her. And he would never go out of his way to seek her out, she was sure. To do that would be too much like making a commitment for him, and he was wary of commitment.
Her holiday came to an end and she felt listless and depressed after spending hours without sleep, pining for she knew not what as she prepared to return to work. She was in her bedroom at the cottage packing her clothes on a Sunday afternoon before setting out on the two-and-a-half-hour drive north when her mother came in with a fruitcake she had baked for her to take with her.
'Bob is downstairs,' Janet announced. 'He wants to have a wee talk with you before you leave.'
'Oh, bother,' said Helen. I've nothing to say to him—nothing at all. Mum, can't you make an excuse for me, tell him I'm late leaving and haven't time to see
him?'
'No, I cannot,' said Janet firmly. 'He's been a good friend to you over the years and I think you owe it to him to hear what he has to say.'
'But, Mother, you don't seem to realise. He's going to propose to me!'
'Of course I realise he is,' retorted Janet. 'Do you think I haven't got eyes in my head?' She looked at Helen closely, her own brown eyes narrowing. 'I thought you'd be glad,' she sighed.
'You've been looking very peaky and worried these past few days and I thought that was what was on your mind. I thought you were worried in case Bob didn't pop the question.'
'All I've been worried about is how to refuse without hurting his feelings too much,' said Helen coolly, fastening the locks on the new suitcase she had bought. 'I don't want to marry him.'
'Oh, Helen, why not?' exclaimed Janet, and sat down suddenly on the edge of the bed.
'Because I don't want to, that's why. Bob is a nice fellow and I'm very fond of him, but I can't see myself living with him. We're too alike and we'd bore each other to tears within six months.' Helen noticed the anxious expression on her mother's face. 'I hope you and Dad haven't been encouraging him,' she said sharply.
'Well, we certainly haven't discouraged him,' retorted Janet. 'And you've gone about with him for so long that we just assumed that you liked him and would be happy with him.' She rose to her feet and went to the door. I'll go and tell him you'll be down in a few minutes, shall I?'
'Then you won't tell him—' began Helen.
'No, I won't. There are some things in this life you have to do for yourself. Helen,' replied Janet tartly, more ruffled than Helen had ever seen her. 'And refusing a proposal of marriage is one of them!'
Surprised by her mother's unusual testiness, Helen finished packing and then carried her cases downstairs. Bob Cairns came into the narrow hallway. For once he wasn't dressed in sailing clothes but was wearing grey pants, an open-necked shirt and a light tweed jacket. His fairish brown hair was brushed neatly and his round rather boyish face was smiling.
