Dark Moonless Night

by Anne Mather

  Caroline nodded. ‘That is my profession,’ she agreed.

  ‘And you could leave it to come out here and act as a kind of nanny to Mrs. Lacey’s children?’

  Caroline smoothed the folds of her dress. ‘It makes a change to have a break now and then,’ she answered quietly.

  ‘I’m sure it does. But I’m surprised you’re not afraid your place will have been filled by the time you get back.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt my place will have been filled, but there’s quite a demand for teaching staff in England,’ Caroline returned dryly.

  ‘Really?’ Her companion accepted a cup of coffee from the tray the houseboy proffered and added two spoonfuls of sugar. ‘You’ll find life out here vastly different from what you’ve been used to, you know. It’s not the romantic wilderness that novelists make it out to be. We don’t have any entertainment—any social life except what we make for ourselves. There are no theatres or dance-halls here, Miss Ashford.’

  ‘I’ve never particularly sought that kind of entertainment, Mrs. Holland,’ retorted Caroline, resenting the implied criticism in the other woman’s voice. ‘And I quite expect to find life very different.’

  Joan Holland’s eyebrows ascended at this, and she cast a comprehensive glance around the room as though to assure herself that she was not missing anything before continuing: ‘Julian and I have been in Africa for more than twenty years. Not permanently in Tsaba, of course. Julian’s worked in Rhodesia and South Africa, and his last appointment was in Zambia.’

  Caroline forced an attentiveness she did not feel. She sipped her coffee and wished she had not evaded Nicolas’s suggestion that she should help him serve the coffee and liqueurs. How foolish she had been to expect that Gareth might make any move towards her simply because she was sitting alone!

  ‘I think Julian wants to speak to you, Joan.’

  The clipped male tones halted the older woman in full spiel, and Caroline’s nerve-ends tingled as she looked up into Gareth Morgan’s lean face.

  Joan Holland drained her coffee cup before replying: ‘Julian wants to speak to me, Gareth?’ She frowned. ‘Do you know why?’ Her eyes were on her husband as she spoke, and looking across the room Caroline could see that he was absorbed in conversation with Jonas Berg, the young South African student, and seemed totally unconcerned as to his wife’s whereabouts.

  ‘I think he said something about losing his spectacles,’ remarked Gareth easily, his thumbs hooked into the low belt of his trousers. ‘Why don’t you go and find out?’

  Joan glared searchingly into his tanned face and then cast a speculative look at Caroline. Getting reluctantly to her feet, she brushed down her skirt and said: ‘Oh, well, if he wants me, I’d better go and see why, hadn’t I?’

  Gareth allowed a faint smile of assent to touch the corners of his mouth. Joan gave him another piercing stare and then marched irritably away. Gareth half turned to watch her progress and then, much to Caroline’s astonishment, lowered his weight on to the couch beside her.

  For a few awkward seconds Caroline could think of nothing to say, but then the inevitable question sprang to her lips: ‘Did Mr. Holland really want to speak to his wife?’ The words came out with a breathless little emphasis, but she had turned to look at him as she spoke and she was intensely aware of his thigh only inches away from hers on the soft skin covering of the couch. Relaxed beside her, he was even more disturbingly attractive than she remembered, and the desire to make him aware of her as she was of him was of paramount importance.

  He returned her gaze with cool analysis and it took all her will power not to succumb to the urge to lower her lids before that detached appraisal. ‘Not as far as I know,’ he conceded dryly.

  ‘Then—then why did you—’ She broke off uncertainly, aware of a sudden flickering of something rather unpleasant in the blue depths confronting her.

  ‘Why did I what?’ he enquired coldly. ‘Interrupt your tête-à-tête with Mrs. Holland?’ He shrugged. ‘I felt sorry for you, although why I should I can’t imagine. But no one cares for Joan’s unsubtle inquisitions.’

  ‘I see.’ Caroline’s spirits sank, and now she did avert her eyes. ‘So it wasn’t done to enable you to speak to me.’

  Gareth considered her downbent head. ‘And what do you suppose I might have to say to you?’ he enquired dispassionately.

  Caroline moved her shoulders, irritation vying with discretion. ‘Don’t you think this is all rather ridiculous, Gareth?’ she demanded in a low voice. ‘We’re adult human beings. Whatever happened all those years ago is gone and —and forgotten. I wish you would stop behaving as if we were antagonists!’

  Gareth drew out a case of cigars and placed one between even white teeth before replying. As he searched for his lighter, he said: ‘But I do feel antagonistic towards you, Caroline, and I see no reason to pretend otherwise. If you want me to be brutally honest then I’ll tell you that I think you have a bloody nerve coming out here!’

  This devastating denunciation was delivered in a calm, unemotional tone, and no one watching him or even hearing the murmur of his voice could have divined from his manner exactly what he was saying. But Caroline could hear, only too well, and anger dispelled any lingering trace of nervousness.

  ‘I think you’re behaving like a boor,’ she accused, fighting against the desire for her voice to rise. ‘I don’t honestly see why you have to feel antagonistic towards me. Our relationship was hardly a permanent one when within a year of our—our separation you married someone else!’

  She had neither meant nor wanted to bring up the question of his previous marriage, and now that she had she wished impotently that she hadn’t. Her words hung between them, a tangible presence in the air, chilling the heated atmosphere.

  ‘I do not intend to discuss the subject of my marriage with you, Caroline,’ said Gareth at last. ‘Indeed, I would prefer it if we didn’t talk at all.’

  ‘Don’t you think that would look rather obvious?’ she enquired, hiding her feelings in an attempt at sarcasm. ‘Particularly as Mrs. Holland has hardly taken her eyes off us since she got up out of that seat!’

  Gareth’s lips curved, but only Caroline knew that his smile did not reach his eyes. ‘I don’t particularly care what Mrs. Holland thinks,’ he remarked unpleasantly. ‘But if you want to keep up the pretence of casual acquaintances exchanging small talk, then go ahead.’

  Caroline clenched his fists. ‘You’re really trying to hurt me, aren’t you, Gareth? I wonder why? Could it be that you don’t find me quite as repulsive as you’d like?’

  She didn’t know what made her say that. Certainly she never for one moment believed it. But the reaction it stimulated startled her. His hand moved with rapier-like swiftness across the space between them, imprisoning her wrist in a grip so painfully tight that she saw the blood receding rapidly. She cast a horrified glance around the room, but no one had noticed their small contretemps. Only a moment before, Mrs. Holland had been diverted from her embarrassing observation by Charles drawing her attention to a rather attractive watercolour hanging above the fireplace, and as everyone else was occupied Gareth’s action had gone unobserved. She would have liked to have tried to free herself, but that would surely have been noticed, and in any case Gareth was pretending to look at her wristwatch.

  ‘I don’t intend to warn you again, Caroline,’ he muttered, grimly. ‘Keep away from me!’

  Her eyes sought his. ‘And if I don’t?’

  ‘Then I won’t be responsible for the consequences.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you do, Caroline.’ His eyes were hard and distrustful. ‘You played me for a fool seven years ago. Well, maybe that was partially my fault. I should have had more sense than to get involved with an immature schoolgirl—’

  ‘I was young, I admit that. But what we shared was good, Gareth,’ she protested, trying to draw her hand away. ‘Please let me go. You’re hurting me!’

  ‘
Hurting you?’ He surveyed her scornfully. ‘I could hurt you a damn sight more than this, believe me.’ He flung her wrist back into her lap and she rubbed the stinging flesh, realising she was going to have quite a bruise by the next day. ‘You won’t make a fool of me a second time, Caroline. It may be a painful process, but one learns by one’s mistakes.’

  Caroline put a protective hand over her reddening wrist. Perhaps she deserved that. After all, she had been responsible for their break-up. She could still remember the blazing row they had had the night she told him she couldn’t marry him. But that was in the past again. She forced her thoughts back to the immediate present.

  ‘So it’s no use my saying I’m sorry,’ she ventured quietly.

  ‘You’re sorry!’ He stared at her with an incredulous mixture of anger and derision. ‘My God, Caroline, that beats all!’

  ‘Why? Why shouldn’t I say I’m sorry? I am. Very.’

  ‘I’ll bet you are!’ He stared at her for another long moment and then shook his head disbelievingly. ‘Oh, Caroline, what an admission! I’ve heard everything now. What’s brought this on? Have you just begun to realise that you’re not a teenager any longer, and that that comfortable meal-ticket for life is passing you by? What happened to all those high ideals? Things must be rough if you’ve had to resort to this!’

  His words were the cruellest she had ever heard. They bit deeply into her heart, taking a stranglehold on her emotions. She badly wanted to hurt him then. She would have liked to have struck him, slapped that sardonic contempt from his lean face, battered at him with her fists until he begged for mercy. But of course, even without the paralysing associations of their surroundings, she could never do that. He was too powerful, too strong for her ever to physically damage him. With one hand he had once been able to imprison both of hers behind her back, propelling her towards him, feeding from her mouth with a hunger which only she had been capable of assuaging. And during this time she had been attending a sixth form college, working for her ‘A’ levels, listening to other girls giggling about the boys they had dated the night before. She had never indulged in that kind of childishness, in fact she had gained a reputation for being aloof; but no one had suspected that the man who sometimes picked her up at the college gates in his sleek Rover saloon was anything other than the uncle she pretended him to be. Looking back on it now, she wondered whether circumstances had not had some bearing on her decision. Maybe if she had been able to discuss her feelings with someone other than her mother who had been biased from the start she would not have made such a terrible mistake.

  She suddenly realised that Gareth was still watching her, and with a muffled exclamation she rose to her feet. But to her surprise he rose too, looking down at her with a strange expression in his eyes.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked in a low voice, and she realised with a fleeting sense of despair that he was concerned about her. Basically, he was a decent man—wasn’t that one of the reasons she had fallen in love with him, why she still loved him?—and although he despised her as a woman, he could still feel concern for her as a fellow human being. Or was she perhaps being too charitable? Maybe it was simply that he was afraid of what she might betray to the others in this distressed state. She felt suddenly cold. Was that all that was left for her in him? An impersonal regard to her physical condition?

  ‘Oh, Gareth,’ she breathed, raising tear-filled eyes to his face, and his expression hardened into resignation.

  ‘At last,’ he commented dryly. ‘The ultimate weapon—tears! Dear me, Caroline, you’ll have to do better than that!’

  She caught her breath at his callousness, and the tears froze behind her eyes. How could he? she thought, a violent hatred against him flooding her being where before there had been weakness and regret. She itched to rake her nails down his sarcastic cheek. How dared he speak to her in such a way? Oh, why had she ever imagined that time might have healed the gulf between them? All she had done was lay herself open to ridicule and humiliation. A desire to make him suffer as he was making her suffer was conceived inside her, and she started violently when a casual voice said:

  ‘Come on, Gareth! You can’t monopolise the lady all evening!’

  While Caroline endeavoured to gather her composure, Gareth turned to his friend with infuriating coolness. ‘I’m sorry, Nick,’ he apologised. ‘Was I doing that?’ He allowed his mocking gaze to flicker with casual insolence over Caroline. ‘I must have forgotten the time. You know how it is.’

  Caroline felt tension like a ball inside her, but two could play at that game, she thought, with unaccustomed maliciousness.

  ‘Yes, it’s always—fun—to talk over old times, isn’t it, Garry?’ she agreed sweetly, knowing how much he detested the diminutive form of his name. ‘You must forgive us, Mr. Freeleng.’

  Nicolas laughed and assured her that she made him feel quite old when she insisted on addressing him so formally, but even as he spoke she was conscious of Gareth’s surprised stiffening beside her. She was inordinately glad. No doubt he had thought her completely shattered by the events of the past few minutes, but if she was, she had no intention of letting him see. There was more than one way to win a war, she was beginning to realise, and perhaps all the weapons were not on his side after all.

  ‘I expect you two do find things to talk about,’ Nicolas was saying now. ‘You used to live near Gareth’s sister, I understand, Caroline.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. But after my mother died, I moved away.’

  Nicolas nodded, then he grinned at the other man. ‘Still, Gareth, you mustn’t keep it all to yourself, you know. She wasn’t brought along here for your benefit.’

  Gareth half smiled, a rather unpleasant little smile, Caroline thought. Then he said: ‘I know she wasn’t, Nick. To be quite honest, I was—surprised she came.’

  ‘Why?’ Nicolas raised his dark brows.

  ‘Well, I understood she came out here to take care of Lacey’s children.’ A sidelong glance was intended to be de-moralising, and Caroline’s temper simmered. ‘I was sure she’d be roped in to babysit.’

  Caroline longed to say something devastating, but of course she couldn’t. It was left to Nicolas to explain, but she had the sense to realise that Gareth was telling her in no uncertain terms that he had not come here this evening expecting to see her.

  ‘You’re not sugesting that a delicious morsel like this should be left to play nursemaid, when someone else is quite prepared to take over, are you, Gareth?’

  Gareth shrugged. ‘Someone has to do it.’

  ‘Agreed. And Mac’s daughter was more than willing.’ Nicolas’s smile widened. ‘Now, tell me, don’t you think that suits her talents more admirably than Caroline’s?’

  Caroline’s face burned. They were talking about her as if she wasn’t present, and while she understood that Nicolas meant no harm, she could not be so sure of Gareth.

  He straightened from pressing out his cigar in an ashtray and answered: ‘You could be right. Sandra certainly does have a way with children—with anyone.’

  ‘Including you, my friend,’ Nicolas chuckled, and turned to Caroline. ‘You must forgive me, but I think Gareth has quite a soft spot for Sandra, and it’s certain that she has a soft spot for him!’

  Caroline’s answering smile was a little set. ‘Really?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ Nicolas shook his head. ‘She’s been a great comfort to him recently, hasn’t she, Gareth?’

  Gareth made a casual movement of his shoulders. ‘If it pleases you to think so, Nick.’

  Nicolas nodded. ‘Yes—well, I get the impression that that subject is taboo, so let me get you a drink, Caroline, and you can tell me what you think of my house.’

  For the remainder of the evening Nicolas never strayed far from her side. After the coffee cups were cleared away and more drinks were served, the record player was set in motion, and the younger members of the party danced. Once while she was drifting round the floor in Nicolas’s a
rms, Caroline saw Mrs. Holland take up a position beside Gareth, and she wondered what explanation if any he offered for his tardy dismissal of her earlier in the evening. He himself made no attempt to dance with anyone, and although she would have loved to have gone across and asked him it was too soon to attempt to put any kind of plan into action. Nicolas’s words about Sandra Macdonald had shaken her somewhat. Until that moment the fact that Gareth was no longer married had meant to her that he was free. But what if his marriage had failed because of his involvement with someone else? Someone like Sandra Macdonald, for example. It was quite a thought.

  Nicolas, of course, was charming and amusing, and she found herself liking him more and more. It was good to know that at least one person present had sought her company, and every time they passed the couch where Gareth was sitting, she became deliberately attentive to her partner, ignoring the contemptuous curve of Gareth’s mouth as he watched them. She drank more than she had done before, too, but the alcohol helped enormously in dulling her pained senses, and the determination to make Gareth pay for his cruelty was still strong in her mind when Charles drove them home just after eleven.

  She slept that night the minute her head touched the pillow, and it was not until the next morning that a blinding headache reminded her of everything that had happened.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DAVID and Miranda were full of enthusiasm for Sandra Macdonald. Apparently she had read them a story the previous evening before settling them down for sleep, and had told them that if they were good they could go to tea at her house the next afternoon.

  ‘She said that there are twins living next door to her,’ added David excitedly. ‘They’re boys and they’re only six years old. Sandra said that when they’re eight they’ll go to school in England, but for the moment she’s teaching them.’

  ‘Is she?’ Caroline tried to sound interested, but the aspirins she had taken seemed to be making not the slightest impression on her headache.

  ‘Yes,’ answered Miranda, nodding. ‘Their names are John and Joseph, and their mummy and daddy come from South Africa.’