The Tender Night

by Lilian Peake

Shelley was so relieved she could have cried. But all she said was, ‘Good. Now I’m off to bed. Jan?’ Janine looked up. ‘I’m happy for you—about the partnership in the business, I mean.’

  They laughed together and parted for the night.

  Craig looked up briefly as Shelley walked into the office next morning. As she pushed her spectacles into place he leaned back in his chair and said,

  ‘I’ve had another letter from my mother. She informs me that she and her major have talked over the possibility of their marrying each other and have come to the conclusion that it would be an admirable arrangement for both of them.’ Craig leaned forward, elbows on desk. ‘How would you like that, Miss Jenner? Coldbloodedly to consider marriage, no nonsense about love and involvement of feelings, just a business deal, a partnership, an “admirable arrangement.” It should appeal to you.’ His smile was mocking. ‘Since you’ve once had your heart broken beyond repair—or so you allege—and consequently vowing never again to become entangled with another man, such a cool, levelheaded liaison should commend itself to you wholeheartedly.’

  Shelley answered slowly, ‘I may have had my heart broken, but it hasn’t left me heartless. I could never, ever, marry without love. I could never enter into an intimate relationship with a man for whom I had no feelings.’

  ‘No? I don’t believe you. I had the proof before my eyes yesterday morning in this room that you were capable of doing just that. Coldly and without an element of feeling, you were letting Emery Slade make ardent love to you and what’s more, responding.’

  ‘Can’t you let the subject drop?’ she cried. ‘I told you, it was because of what you said about letting my barriers down. It was a—a kind of challenge. Michael Townley walked out on me. I leave you cold. At least Emery’s shown interest ... I began to think there was something wrong with me. I was afraid—’ Somehow she must stop herself pouring out her deepest fears. And the only way to do that was to remove herself from Craig’s presence with all possible speed. She looked at her watch. It was a little early, but he would not know that.

  She rose. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have a reading class to take. Mrs. Gordon’s away again.’ As she crossed the room he said, irritation sharpening his tone,

  ‘Your place is here, not in front of a class. As I’ve said before, you’re unqualified. Someone else must be found to replace Mrs. Gordon when she’s off work—a trained teacher.’

  Shelley replied defiantly, ‘Your mother has no objection to my doing it. In fact she encourages me.’

  ‘Of course she does. Because it saves her money. If you didn’t do it, she would have to employ a qualified part-time teacher, whereas you, like a fool, do the job uncomplainingly for the mere pittance she gives you as her secretary.’

  Shelley grew agitated. Now it really was time for her to go. ‘I’m sorry, the class will be waiting...’ She cut the sentence short and ran. If she had stayed to finish it she knew he would have taken active steps to prevent her going, even restraining her physically. And these days she would rather risk Craig Allard’s displeasure than the touch of his hands.

  Janine went out with the Hon. Marius Halliday and returned bright-eyed and loquacious. It seemed they had driven on to the moors, parked the car and spent most of the time talking. Although what a newly qualified young hairdresser and a rich, fast-living young member of the aristocracy had in common sufficiently to spend hours discussing it, Shelley could not imagine.

  The situation worried her a little, but she reasoned that provided Janine did not take the young man seriously, the experience of being taken around by such a person could do her no harm and might even do some good.

  It seemed that Janine’s friendship with Craig had come to an abrupt end. Shelley supposed that Sylva was in favour again. How long would it be before he succumbed to her attractions, forfeited his bachelor freedom and became ‘the marrying kind?’

  Emery took the dispensing of his services as one of the leaders of the camping holiday at first with resentment and annoyance, then with resignation. Two days before the start of the trip Craig called at the lodge, meeting Janine in the hall. But she dashed past him to join Marius Halliday as he screeched to a stop outside the front door.

  When she had gone, Craig asked, ‘How do you like your sister dallying with an offshoot of the British aristocracy? Haven’t you tried putting pressure on her to give up her association with her rich playboy?’

  Shelley shrugged. ‘As long as she doesn’t get serious about him, I don’t object. Why should I? And even if I did, what good would it do? As you keep telling me, I’m not my sister’s keeper. She’s nearly twenty, after all.’

  ‘You’re not afraid she’ll get too—involved?’

  Shelley frowned. ‘If you mean what I think you mean, then surely you’re a better judge of that possibility than I am? You’ve taken her around for some while, long enough to test her powers of refusal.’ She smiled and her eyebrows arched, asking him a silent question.

  ‘If that remark was intended to get out of me how far I personally went with her, then all I can say is, “I pass”.’

  Shelley said, her face wooden, ‘Why did you come?’

  ‘Not for the welcome I knew I’d get from you.’

  ‘I’m sorry. If you’d given me advance warning, I’d have put down the red carpet and mustered a reception committee, not to mention dressed in my best.’

  He plainly took objection to her sarcasm because his eyes flickered with a passing but intense anger, but it was under control within seconds. Instead it turned into a cool appraisal of her clothes, the black low-cut top with its scarlet appliqued flowers across the front, and the scarlet trousers, both of which she had borrowed from Janine, at Janine’s insistence. Janine had styled her hair again, and it hung in softly curling layers to her shoulders.

  Craig, however, made no comment. His eyes were unreadable, too, and Shelley felt fiercely self-conscious, wishing for a moment that she was hiding as usual behind the dull facade of her working clothes.

  Craig walked away to stare out of the window. Shelley sat curled up in her chair, watching the rigidity of his back and sensing that something was troubling him. When he turned, he was serious and withdrawn.

  ‘I came to see you,’ he said, ‘because I had a phone call from my mother this evening. She’s on her way across Europe and is apparently making for Scandinavia. She’s not alone on her travels this time.’ He paused and looked at her, a deep frown drawing his brows together. ‘It seems I now have a stepfather.’

  Shelley uncurled her legs and, with an immense effort, pulled herself from the chair. She felt like a man who had detected an earth tremor beneath his feet and knew it was only the beginning and that the earthquake proper, the havoc, the devastation, was yet to come.

  The announcement winded her, drained her of colour and, momentarily, of life. ‘You mean,’ she whispered, ‘your mother has married again?’

  ‘What else could I mean? My stepfather’s name, apparently, is Major Hunter, Major Eric Hunter.’ Craig gave a twisted smile. ‘In view of my age in relation to his, he has invited me to call him Eric.’

  ‘But—but when did it happen?’

  ‘The wedding? A few days ago. They wanted no fuss, no presents, no relatives, not even me, the bride’s son. Not even, apparently, the daughter the bridegroom had by his first wife. The young woman, they tell me, is only a year or two younger than I am. My mother and stepfather are honeymooning now.’

  ‘But,’ Shelley ran her tongue over her lips, ‘the school?’ She motioned with her hand in the direction of the house. ‘What’s going to happen to all that?’

  He said, his eyes blank, ‘I have more news for you. Since it seems they don’t intend to settle down anywhere at present—apparently my stepfather shares my mother’s roaming instincts, which is just as well—my mother has given me—I repeat, given me—Mapleleaf House School. Since the building is already my property, she says, all it contains, the kids, the equipment, the problems
, should also be mine. So,’ with a brief, exasperated sigh, ‘she’s left the baby well and truly on my doorstep.’

  ‘What will you do, Craig?’

  ‘Do?’ He lifted a shoulder noncommittally. ‘It’s anybody’s guess. I’ve hardly had time to consider the position. It’s only,’ he consulted his watch, ‘twelve minutes since I put the receiver down after speaking to her.’

  So he had come at once to tell her? That, Shelley felt, at least was something to treasure, she had his confidence to that extent. But of course he would have to tell his mother’s secretary, wouldn’t he? After all, she dealt with the head teacher’s correspondence, both private and general.

  ‘But, Craig, your job—?’

  ‘At the university?’ He turned to the window again and for a long time studied the gravel outside the window, although it was plain he was not seeing a single pebble. Then he said at last, ‘That is my true vocation. By instinct I’m a teacher, but not of children, otherwise I would have become a schoolteacher. As I’ve told you before, kids en masse just don’t appeal. By training and inclination I’m a teacher of adults.’

  ‘But, Craig,’ there was a waver in her voice and he turned to look at her, ‘the school—what about the school? If you reject it, what will happen to it—to the children, the staff and—and me?’

  CHAPTER TEN

  For long time Craig did not reply to the question. And even when he did, he answered indirectly.

  ‘One thing I can say for certain. I’m not taking my mother’s place. You know my views on privately-run educational establishments. Also there are a lot of things wrong with the place. Everything is too traditional—the teaching methods, the outlook of the staff. The science equipment needs renewing, the classes are too large for a fee-paying school.’

  ‘You could bring in a new head teacher,’ Shelley suggested.

  He looked at her speculatively. ‘You favour my allowing the school to continue?’

  Shelley studied her hands. ‘Don’t ask me. I’m hardly a disinterested onlooker. My job’s tied up with the place. And,’ she found some courage to look at him, ‘my home.’

  He strolled across to stand in front of her and looked for some time into her wavering, troubled eyes. She could not stand the intensity of his gaze, yet she could not tear her eyes from his.

  ‘Craig—?’ she whispered uncertainly. If she stretched out her hand and grasped his arm, if she pleaded, ‘Don’t go away, don’t go back to your job, stay here and run the school as your mother did and I would work for you to the end of my days,’ would he relent and agree? But she knew that trying to persuade him to change the course of his career at this stage in his life would be like trying to coax a mountain to move.

  But, her mind persisted, if she whispered, ‘Don’t leave me. I love you and can’t imagine life without you’, what would he do then?

  At last he moved away. Whatever he had seen in her eyes had obviously left him unimpressed.

  ‘I shall have to give the matter a great deal of thought.’ At the door he turned. ‘How many children are coming on this trek into the great unknown?’ Six, she told him. ‘I take it everything’s ready—equipment, food and so on?’ Everything was ready, she said. ‘We leave on Friday morning in the minibus.’

  ‘Destination?’

  She gestured vaguely. ‘The moors. Not too far away. It’s just to keep them occupied until their parents come for them.’

  Craig nodded and with a brief goodnight, he left her. When Janine came home, the news about Craig’s mother surprised but did not shatter her. She was wrapped about in a blanket of happiness.

  ‘Marius is a darling,’ she sighed. ‘He said he’s serious about me. He said I’m just what he’s been looking for.’ Shelley frowned and remarked, in an attempt to bring her sister back to earth, ‘I suppose you know we’re in danger of losing the roof over our heads?’

  Janine said, ‘So what? Marius won’t let us roam the streets homeless.’

  It was impossible to get through to her, so Shelley prepared herself to listen until bedtime to the eulogies that poured from her sister’s lips about the man she seemed quite seriously to have fallen in love with. The faintest stirrings of hope that Janine’s feelings might be reciprocated were beginning to register in Shelley’s brain. If Marius Halliday was as serious about Janine as she seemed to be about him, then at least one problem would have been lifted from Shelley’s shoulders.

  It was the afternoon of the third day of camp. The weather had, so far, been unbelievably kind. Shelley was sitting, knees drawn up, watching the boys play cricket.

  She was wearing a skirt and a sleeveless top and she looked at her arms with their deep tan and her bare legs which, although paler, because she had mostly worn trousers, had likewise reacted to the sun’s rays.

  Her eyes wandered about the landscape. Although the hills barely topped fifteen hundred feet, they rose so abruptly from the fields and meadows that their height appeared much greater than it really was. Cliffland or Cleveland, the first Scandinavian settlers had named it. As they had gone for walks, Craig had pointed here and there to evidence of occupation by prehistoric man. There were burial mounds, earthworks, even foundations of huts.

  Craig ... Shelley’s eyes shifted to glance covertly at the reclining figure of the man a short distance away, resting on his elbow, reading. When they had not been walking with the boys, or cooking the meals and doing the other jobs connected with keeping six hungry, energetic specimens of young manhood well fed and happy, Craig had spent his spare time reading. And reading and reading...

  She dragged her eyes away—they returned to his recumbent form again and again, but he seemed entirely unaware of the fact—and let them roam the countryside. From the height at which they had set up camp, she could see here and there farmhouses, grey-walled and built of local stone, with no visible road leading to them, only well-worn tracks.

  Remote and lonely—the word applied to herself as well as to those old farms. They were as isolated as she was, cut off from most modern forms of communication just as she was cut off from Craig. It was he who had effected the ‘disconnection’. He treated her politely but distantly, although to the boys he was friendliness itself.

  There was a pain inside her that the peace all round, the sight of quiet, undemanding sheep grazing along the unfenced roads, the sighing of the wind through the grasses and heather, could not salve. Surely, she tortured herself, he would have behaved in a much more friendly way to any other person who had accompanied him, whether they had been male or female? Could it, she asked herself, be just because my name’s Shelley Jenner, and he must not under any circumstances let me begin to think I mean more to him than any other member of the school’s staff? Or any other of the women he has known and no doubt, in passing, made love to in the course of his thirty odd years?

  Her head swivelled towards him again, this time involuntarily, and she found he was looking at her. Her heart pumped furiously and the look she returned was unintentionally belligerent. How could she help it when he was hurting her so much?

  The cries and shouts of the boys vied with the call of the curlews and the circling birds to disturb the air. A plane droned aimlessly across the endless sky, an insect buzzed near Shelley’s ear and she jerked her head to make it go away.

  Then, tired of the ache which had her in its grip, she lay back and felt the rough grass scratch her neck. Irritably she sat up and saw that Craig was moving towards her. His shirt was undone, revealing his chest which was deeply tanned. His trousers were light-coloured and well-fitting.

  ‘Trouble?’ he asked, his mouth curving into a slight smile.

  ‘Can’t get comfortable,’ she replied shortly. He was aware of her presence at last, but paradoxically it seemed to increase her irritability.

  He said, ‘I suggest something to rest your head on. I’ll play Sir Galahad for once and find you a pillow. Any objections if I invade the privacy of your tent?’

  It would be the firs
t time since we arrived, she thought a little sourly, but shook her head. He bent down to let himself under the flap. He emerged with an inflated cushion and said, ‘Try that.’

  He waited until she had lowered herself into a reclining position, then he lifted her head, his fingers sinking into her hair, and pushed the cushion under it.

  The touch of him brought the colour surging into her cheeks. In an effort to hide it, she turned on her side away from him, and said, in a brittle voice, ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Don’t mention it.’ He seemed to be smiling. Then he went on, standing beside her, ‘It’s a good thing the weather’s behaved. With those two tents you and I are sleeping in, even a few showers could have brought disaster. Trust my mother to order the new equipment for the fee-paying toddlers, and forget to do likewise for the teachers. If I’d known the two staff tents hadn’t been renewed for an unknown number of years, I’d have called the whole thing off.’ He sat beside her. If he had wanted, he could have touched her, but the fact that he had no intention of doing so became clear in the first few seconds.

  Shelley opened her eyes, twisted round and saw that he was gazing around as she had been doing, drinking in the beauties of the moors and hills. Nearby a stream flowed and frothed over smooth, time-worn stones. A fight threatened to break out between two of the boys and Craig’s muscles tensed, ready to intervene, but the quarrel ended as abruptly as it had started.

  Shelley’s despair grew with the long silence. Had they lost all means of communicating with each other? Now and then there was a whirr of grouse rising unexpectedly into the air; or a sheep bleated in answer to another.

  With her head resting on her linked hands, Shelley studied Craig’s profile. It was impassive and remote, his eyes narrowed slightly against the brightness of the sun. He must have felt her regard because his head turned slowly. She did not move her eyes—she could not, it was beyond her power.

  Their gaze clashed and held fast, like a well-knotted rope having an interminable strain imposed on it. It was like a game of tug-of-war. Shelley, her body vibrating with a primitive longing, felt her will-power slipping slowly away, and was the first to yield and concede victory.