The drawing room door was open and Saul was sitting there. Probably her father was too, and she didn't want to talk to either of them. She wanted to walk quietly out of the house and quickly along the lane. That was why she hadn't let the taxi come here, because she wanted to get away with nobody knowing.
But she stood still, clutching her handbag to her as though it was keeping her afloat in deep water, and their gaze locked. Then she took two steps and stood in the doorway glaring at him. 'What's on your mind?' he asked.
Her father wasn't here, and there was so much on her mind that her head was bursting and the air seemed charged like electricity. 'Why did he tell you the business was in trouble?' she demanded. 'He hadn't seen you in fifteen years. Why you?'
Saul seemed to consider his answer. 'Perhaps because I was around when he reached the stage of not being able to keep it to himself any longer, and once he started it seemed possible that we might come to some arrangement.'
The dark eyes bored into her skull, and she could imagine how Saul Laurenson would learn all he wanted to know, drawing out the confidences. Her father had said that, so far as appearances went, he had hardly changed since he ran his stall on the Thursday market. 'He recognised you after all those years,' she said. 'He said you always had a lean and hungry look.' 'Did he?'
'You know the quotation?'
'I've seen the play.' He sounded amused, and of course he knew Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. He might have finished his schooling at sixteen, but he had acquired much more than money since then.
'The lean and hungry man's dagger ended in Caesar's back,' she said. 'You wouldn't be stabbing my father in the back?'
He would be unlikely to admit it if he was, but he looked straight at her. 'I've been hungry in my time, it's something that puts an edge on your dealings, but I prefer to get what I want by fair means.'
Charlotte's throat was so dry that her voice rasped. 'And if fair means don't work how do you go about getting what you want?'
He smiled, eyes hooded,. 'You know, in the last ten years, I can't recall one single thing I wanted that I didn't get,' and she backed away, shaking her head as though he had said, 'Come here,' and said hurriedly, 'I'm going to see a friend.'
Saul didn't say anything, but she almost ran from the house, and reaching the end of the road as the taxi came into sight hopped in as it slowed down.
'In a hurry, aren't we?' said the taxi driver. He owned the local garage, a stocky jovial man. 'Running away from home?'
'I'm late for a date,' said Charlotte.
'We can't have that. Chipping Queanton, isn't it?'
'Outside the fish and chip shop in the High Street.'
Bob Reading had known Charlotte all her life, and he chuckled now, 'Is that the best he can do for you, fish and chips?' Then he turned serious. 'Hear you've had a bit of an upset. All right, are you?'
He was talking about yesterday's accident, but Charlotte almost burst into hysterical laughter. Her life had been turned upside down and inside out, you couldn't get a much bigger upset than that, and in the back seat she pressed her clenched fist to her lips for a moment before she said, steadily enough, ,'I was shaken, that's all.'
She was shaking inside now, for other reasons. She leaned back, face turned towards the passing countryside, thoughts rushing through her head… My father has always believed I'm special, but Saul Laurenson doesn't. He may be looking for a wife, but he isn't going to choose me, and if by some crazy quirk he did I could say no. I would say that I loved Jeremy. No, no, no, I would say…
She did love Jeremy. Love made you happy and kept you safe. Saul Laurenson was darkness and danger. He was someone she had to fight every inch of the way, not giving a step, because if he got too close God only knew what might happen to her.
They came to the town and passed Dunscombes, its windows alight and glittering behind the protective grilles, and Charlotte looked at the name above, in gold on black, and thought, That may be changed. She would be sad if it were, but it was no longer the business she was fearful for. Trade was brisk at the fish and chip shop. The door at the side, with two bells, was closed, but they had a key for the flat at the shop and Charlotte went inside, skirting the queue and waiting to catch the eye of someone behind the counter.
She was spotted by a couple in the queue first. Young men, in jeans and T-shirts that read 'I'm Yours', and 'Young Farmers Do It Better', who eyed her up and down and pronounced, 'Tasty.'
Then the man serving saw her, and Charlotte signalled, 'Could I have the key to the flat?'
'Come through.' He lifted the flap of the counter. 'The wife's in.' He knew that Charlotte was Jeremy Wylde's girl, and she went through the door into a living room, where a boy was doing homework on the table and a woman was sewing and watching television.
There was a slight flurry while Mrs Soskins fished in the sideboard drawer for the key. She thought Charlotte and Jeremy made a lovely pair, but this was the first time that Charlotte had arrived to be let into the flat to wait for Jeremy, and Mrs Soskins was intrigued. Then she spotted the bruise under the fringe and another five minutes passed while Charlotte explained how that had come about.
Ten-year-old Stephen was impressed by the bruise. His eyes gleamed. 'Cor, you must have gone a smacker into that windscreen! You could have cut your head off!' 'He watches too much telly,' said his mother complacently. 'Sure you won't have a cup of tea? They're not usually back much before half past ten.'
Of course Peter lived here too, he would probably be with Jeremy, so there would be things Charlotte couldn't say until she had Jeremy to herself, maybe on the way home.
She said, 'Thank you, but I'll go up and wait for them if I may.' The Soskins owned the flat, but the actors paid the rent, and Charlotte Dunscombe was a highly respectable young lady. Mrs Soskins said of course she could and handed over the key, and let Charlotte into the hall from which the stairs led to the first floor flat, switching on the light for her.
Charlotte had never opened this door before. It took her a moment to get the knack of the lock, while Mrs Soskins waited below until the door swung open. Then Mrs Soskins turned off the light and the hall went dark and Charlotte stepped into the shadowy room.
She had been here often enough for the shadows to seem familiar, and she wished it was her key and she could stay. Her home didn't feel safe any longer, while Saul Laurenson was there. She would have liked somewhere like this for a hiding place.
The room was medium sized, furnished comfortably, lit by the lighted street, and Charlotte settled herself in a chair by the window. There were plenty of people about. She watched, with an elbow on the sill and her chin cupped in her hand, and it was like a street scene in a play. Before long Jeremy would come down the road from the direction of the theatre and she would have to explain what had been urgent enough to bring her here tonight.
If the two men returned together she would say she'd got bored, lying resting when there was nothing wrong with her, and the roses were lovely and she'd thought she would just pop over and say thank you. Later she would tell Jeremy about Saul Laurenson, that she didn't trust him or like him and that she had suddenly had to get away from him.
She gasped and leaned forward, her forehead touched the glass of the window and she muttered, 'Ouch!' There was a tall man in the doorway of the shop opposite, and for a moment she thought he was looking up at this window and that he was Saul. Then she saw he was one of a group of young folk, larking about, and you would have to be blind as a bat to imagine a resemblance between him and Saul Laurenson. There was nothing wrong with Charlotte's eyes, but even when she closed them Saul Laurenson's face seemed etched on her lids like a mirror image.
She thought, I'm getting a persecution mania, imagining him coming after me; she pulled the curtains and switched on the light and went into the kitchenette to see what she could find in the fridge. She wasn't hungry, although she hadn't eaten much today, it was just something to do. But she helped herself to a slice of pork pie a
nd a glass of white wine from an opened bottle.
The flat was rather stuffy, the wine was cool and refreshing and more palatable than the pie, which tasted stale. After a mouthful of pie she dropped it into the waste bin and took the wine back into the living room where a tape-recorder, with a script and phone beside it, stood on a low table.
Jeremy and Peter sometimes learned their lines by speaking them into the recorder and listening to the playback. This was a new play. Charlotte read a little, then turned on the recorder and listened to the readings. Peter had a good strong voice, he was a good actor, but she thought that Jeremy sounded infinitely more dramatic. His voice had all sorts of thrilling nuances, and it was pleasant sitting here, sipping her wine and listening.
Peter was speaking when she heard a whirring-clicking sound, followed by Jeremy's voice in the background saying, 'Hello, love, I got your message, are you coming round later?' and realised that this must have been when he phoned her yesterday.
She listened to his comments, remembering her own… 'I'll kill him!' Jeremy was saying, '… risking your neck. He should have seen the other car.' Then she'd talked about the high hedges and the other driver coming out on to the main road… 'What were you doing in his car anyway?' And she had explained and teased, 'You wouldn't be jealous?' 'Not so long as you still think he looks like Dracula,' said Jeremy.
Of course tape-recorders were all over the place these days, but this was a little spooky, hearing a few moments she had thought gone for ever being re-enacted. She heard the click as the phone was put down and Peter asked, 'What was all that about?'
'Charlotte was in a car crash.' No mistaking the concern in Jeremy's voice, nor the shock in Peter's, 'My God!'
'She's all right.'
'Thank God for that,' said Peter fervently. 'So what was that about Dracula?'
'The man who was with her,' said Jeremy.
'And what was she doing in his car?'
'He's looking for a house, going round property.'
'And she was looking with him?' A bantering note had crept into Peter's voice. 'I'd watch out for him if I were you. There aren't many girls like Charlotte around, lovely and loaded, and you always did have expensive tastes.'
Jeremy said, 'Too true,' and Charlotte thought, I'm not loaded any more. Not that it would make any difference to the way Jeremy felt about her, but it would make a world of difference to her life, and she switched off the recorder and wondered what tomorrow would bring. She hoped she was a survivor, but the unknown quantity was Saul Laurenson and how far his influence would shape her future.
She jumped up and poured herself another glass of wine, then paced the room and longed for Jeremy. But when the phone rang she hesitated, then reached very slowly for the receiver. It was Jeremy, to say he would be with her within minutes and was she all right?
'I am now,' she said. When the phone rang she had thought, Saul! although there was no way it could have been. She went on walking, up and down, her nerves ajangle. There was a big old framed mirror on one wall, that had once hung in a shop and had an advertisement for Monkey Brand Soap etched on it. She glanced at her reflection as she passed, and then over her shoulder, still at the mirror image, as though somebody could have been following close behind.
Of course nobody was, she was quite alone, but she was still very shaken. There had been too many shocks, one on top of the other, and when she heard the footsteps on the stairs she opened the door and called, 'Jeremy, is that you?'
She could see him as she called, but she needed the reassurance of his voice, and when he reached her he exclaimed, 'Hey, darling, you look terrible!' She felt pale and her forehead was throbbing. His stage make-up had been hurriedly and sketchily removed, there were still traces of the lines that had been drawn to make the face of the character he was playing, and any other time she would have smiled at that, teased him for being in such a hurry to come to her. But now she was on the edge of tears, she could easily have fallen sobbing into his arms, and as he led her back into the room and seated her again on the sofa she said shakily, 'The roses were lovely, just lovely, and I had to see you.'
'That bruise!' He lifted her hair very gently from her forehead and she was trembling. 'My poor darling,' he said, 'you could have been killed! I've thought of nothing else since you phoned. I need a brandy.' He poured two large measures and as Charlotte sipped hers it steadied her, that and having Jeremy beside her, his arm around her, kissing her tenderly.
'Where's Peter?' she asked after a few minutes.
'Gone to some party.' He smiled his flashing actor's smile. 'Won't be back till late.'
That was tactful of Peter. Late could mean breakfast-time, and she breathed in the smell of cold cream and greasepaint and the tonic Jeremy used on his hair, then she thought how much she loved him and murmured, 'I wish I could stay here.'
'Why not?' He probably thought she had come to stay. She had never come so later before, and it was tempting, but she had to say, 'No, I've got to go back.' Her voice came out husky and he looked closely at her and said, 'You sound almost frightened.'
'Do I?' She smiled as though that was nonsense, but a moment afterwards she admitted, 'Perhaps I am. Dracula's at home.' She was making a joke of it, and Jeremy said, 'Tell me about Dracula.'
She closed her eyes, then took a deep breath and began, 'He's a local boy made good. Very good. From a stall on the market to being at least a millionaire. He's thirty-four and he's a bachelor and he told my father he's tired of being a bachelor, and my father thinks—'
'Not you?' Jeremy interrupted harshly. 'Your father isn't matchmaking with you?'
'My father thinks it would be nice.'
'And what do you think?' Jeremy's face was near hers, she knew that, she could feel it, but she couldn't open her eyes because her lids had become very heavy. 'I think it's impossible,' she said.
'Well, I'm certainly glad to hear that.' But unless she opened her eyes, which she managed to do at last, and stared at Jeremy, she kept seeing Saul.
'But,' she said, 'he has the power.'
'What power?'
'Like Dracula. The eyes!' She drawled that, and made her voice sound like the old retainer's warning in a horror film. 'Would you be closing the window and hanging up some garlic, because I have this notion that he could come flying in?'
'Darling,' said Jeremy, 'you're tipsy.'
'Only a very little.' She was keeping up her spirits because she was afraid of the things that were happening to her. She must do something positive, assert herself, and she looked into Jeremy's long-lashed eyes and asked, 'Do you want to marry me?'
He said, almost at once, 'You know I do,' and she began to smile.
'Now that makes me feel very good, very warm and happy instead of cold and shivery.' She slid her arms round his neck and his arm went round her waist. 'Can I stay?' she asked.
'You certainly can!' His lips muzzled her neck, tickling, and she began to giggle, then sat back a little.
'I'd better phone Aunt Lucy and tell her I'm all right. She could be sending out search parties.' She stretched for the phone and dialled carefully,-one hand holding on to Jeremy.
Her father answered. Aunt Lucy would probably be in bed, it was her bedtime, but Charlotte would have preferred to speak to her. Her father's voice threw her a little. In her hazy state she had been all set to reassure Aunt Lucy that she was staying with friends, and was perfectly all right, and would be home in the morning. But her father almost shouted, 'Charlotte, where the devil are you?'
He had no right to shout at her. He had never shouted or lost his temper before Saul Laurenson came. She asked, 'Is Saul still there?'
'Yes.'
That settled it. She was not going back tonight. Saul Laurenson must be listening to her father shouting at her as though she was a naughty child. She said, loud and clear, and hoped Saul was near enough to hear that too, 'I am with a friend. With Jeremy Wylde. And I could be staying for quite a while, because we're getting married. And y
ou can tell Mr Laurenson that, in case he has the impression that I'm part of a business deal.'
She put down the phone and Jeremy said, 'Your father?'
'Mmm.'
'How do you think he's going to take that?'
Suddenly she was almost sober. She said, 'Better in the morning than he will tonight. I don't think I should have told him tonight, not like that.'
The phone rang and the sound stabbed through her head. 'I can't,' she said, and Jeremy answered, with a laconic, 'Yeah,' and, 'O.K. Peter,' he explained, hanging up. 'The flat's all ours. He's dossing down where the party is.'
Charlotte gulped, 'Are you expecting any more calls?'
'No.'
'Then would you mind leaving the receiver off?'
He lifted it from its cradle and laid it on the script of the new play. His address and number were in the book at home and she didn't want to talk to her father again tonight. Nor to Aunt Lucy. Nor to anyone. The little strength she had left was draining out of her as the euphoria of the alcohol went cold. She said, 'I'll have to lie down, and I'll have to go to sleep.' Her smile was wobbly. 'I feel as though I've been in a head-on collision!'
Jeremy couldn't have been nicer. He gave her his own bed. He said he'd take Peter's. Charlotte slipped off her shoes and dress and slid between the sheets, and by now her headache was raging and her stomach was churning, and she was feeling too rotten to care what happened tomorrow…
Another ringing woke her, but it wasn't the telephone and she heard Jeremy, in the darkness, asking who the hell this was at this time. He turned on a light and went out of the bedroom into the living room, shrugging his naked shoulders into a dressing gown.
Charlotte sat up, hardly breathing, straining to hear as Jeremy threw open the window and called down, 'What do you want? Who is it?' She heard the answer. 'I've come for Charlotte,' and she croaked, 'It's Saul!'
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