Stranger in the Night

by Charlotte Lamb

  It was rumoured that he never smiled because he had bad teeth but was too mean to spend money having them fixed. Clare knew that was a lie. Harry had teeth, all right, she told Macey.

  'And he'd love to get them into you,' Macey had agreed, mocking her. 'I believe they're made of gold, anyway. If Harry goes, his money is going with him.'

  Morose, shrewd, clever, Harry had been, as much a factor in her career as Macey.

  She and Macey had kept in touch over the years. They were neither of them great letter-writers, but somehow Macey always found her, wherever she was, dropping in casually without warning from time to time, his casual charming smile always the same.

  Their careers moved upwards at different paces, in parallel lines which oddly crossed now and then, bringing them back together.

  Macey learnt from each success, each failure, using the lessons to enrich the next play. He was a professional to his fingertips, always looking for new ways to hook an audience and keep them in their seats.

  When one of his plays was televised he got Clare a small part in it and they lunched together while the rehearsals and filming went on, and when Macey had a lead in a London production of his next play, Clare was appearing in a short season of Ibsen at the next theatre.

  They often met during that time. She had played the daughter in The Wild Duck, stumbling around the stage poignantly as a child going slowly blind while lost in the cruelties of an adult world she could not understand, at the mercy of people she loved and who she thought loved her until the veil was ripped from her eyes.

  Clare had found the part deeply moving. It had got her a cluster of generous reviews and led directly to the part which had really brought her fame. She had got the star role in a hugely successful film and she had made a lot of money, as well as a name.

  'But it wasn't acting,' she had told Macey.

  He had given her his wicked smile. 'I know what it was, darling, and you looked devastating. What was it like having the great star make love to you?'

  'Fine in the mornings, but he would eat garlic for lunch,' she had retorted.

  Macey had roared, his blue eyes brilliant. 'You acid little realist, are there no stars in your eyes?'

  She had opened her huge, glimmering green eyes at him. 'You tell me!'

  Macey had moved closer, looking down into them. His hands had come up and caught her shoulders and Clare had felt an odd flicker of alarm at something in his eyes, then he had drawn back, smiling wryly. 'No,' he had agreed. 'Not a twinkle.'

  The famous name playing opposite to her in the film had been less amused. When Clare coolly repulsed all his highly publicised advances, he became petulant. The handsome face which made a million hearts beat faster took on a distinctly sullen look. He was used to easy conquests and Clare's resistance infuriated him.

  'You frigid little bitch,' he snapped, glaring at her during one tempestuous encounter, and Clare had laughed at the incredulous, sulky look on his face.

  'Everyone expects us to get together,' he had broken out angrily. 'Are you trying to ruin my reputation?'

  Clare had bit her lip to stop the smile which threatened. He had seen the amusement in her face, though, and he had looked even more furious.

  'I won't be able to face them,' he had raved. 'They'll all laugh at me if they guess you've turned me down. It's in all the papers—they're waiting for us to start living together.'

  'You shouldn't read your own publicity,' she advised sweetly.

  She had felt sorry for him as she watched him. Under that handsome face and perfect physique was the mind of an adolescent. He was so used to women keeling over whenever he smiled at them that he didn't have a clue what to do in this situation.

  'What am I going to say to them?' he demanded childishly.

  'Try acting,' Clare smiled at him. 'It's time you learnt how to do some.'

  He stalked off looking like Hamlet on the battlements of Elsinore, his eyes wounded.

  Her career after that film had been meteoric. It had made her a big name, her face and figure instantly recognised wherever she went.

  'Especially your figure,' Macey had teased. 'Who can blame them?'

  Clare had learnt to take her looks seriously in a totally realistic sense. She knew how to present the image which the public expected of her. Her looks were part of her stock-in-trade and she looked after them. At twenty-seven she was cool, clear-headed and ambitious. She had made her name in films, but she still preferred the theatre because the adrenalin which surged into her veins came from a live audience. The two-way communication one got on a stage meant more to her than the money she could earn in a film.

  'Although the money's nice,' she had admitted to Macey, and he had given her a sardonic, appreciative look from the top of her light golden head to her hand-sewn Italian shoes, taking in all the slender curves of her body in the expensive London-designed dress on the way down.

  'And, of course, poverty becomes you,' he had drawled.

  'Sarcasm!' she had laughed back at him.

  Macey was her bridge to reality. He would not let her head be turned by all the public adulation she had received after her film. His cool, ironic eyes punctured an ego quicker than a pin stuck into a balloon.

  She felt him moving restlessly beside her now. His own success had not made him invulnerable to the tension of each new attempt. The play she was reading was his latest. Clare was the first person to read it, and Macey was strung-up as he waited for her verdict. The central role was a part which she had slowly recognised as being based on herself. Macey had made no attempt to disguise the fact. His shrewd analysis of her character was no surprise to her. Macey's reading of motivation and human nature was well known to her. But one scene had struck her forcibly. The girl suddenly broke out into a poignant speech which showed Clare that, although she had never confided in Macey, he had somehow deduced something of what had happened to her to make her emotionally and physically withdrawn.

  Clare had read the scene three times now. She went on to finish the play quite quickly before closing the script and turning to look levelly at Macey.

  He caught the mock-accusation in her green eyes and flung up his hands in a wry gesture. 'Don't shoot! I'm innocent.'

  'And clever,' Clare murmured drily. 'Good guesswork?' Macey watched her, one dark brow arching upwards, his mouth level.

  'I'm not sure I like having my past disinterred in public and the remains picked over by a literary rag-and-bone man.'

  'Sorry, ma'am,' Macey mocked softly. 'Especially when he's just guessing!' 'It makes good theatre, doesn't it?' 'So that's all I mean to you,' she retorted. 'Cannibal!'

  The sideways flick of his blue eyes moved away almost at once. 'I won't use it without your permission. I don't need to tell you that, do I, Clare?'

  She fingered the pages of the script, staring down the terraced levels of the garden. The rocky coast below them danced in a heat haze which softened the rugged outlines where the land met the sea. Macey had rented this house from a wealthy London businessman who kept it for annual holidays himself but, typically, liked to make even his pleasure pay for its keep. When Clare agreed to stay there she hadn't been aware that Macey was writing. Her first week had been spent just lying here in the sun or idly cruising around the large open-air swimming pool which lay to one side of the house. Macey had worked with dedicated concentration, only appearing at mealtimes or in the evenings.

  There had been other guests that week, all of them theatre people, friends of both Clare and Macey. Conversation had been mutually limited to small talk about the weather or the scenery. They had all wanted to relax and do nothing very much. The others had left yesterday, brown as berries and reluctant to return to London after their days in the sun. Now Macey and Clare were alone in the villa.

  That didn't bother her. She was too used to Macey's constant presence to be aware of him as anything but the friend and ally he had become over the years.

  'Well?' Macey asked lightly, and she looked ro
und at him.

  'Will you do it?' he asked.

  'Try and stop me.' Her sudden smile made his eyes gleam.

  'You have impeccable taste—I've told you that before.'

  She laughed. 'Flatterer!' She fluttered the pages of the script. 'First, you'll have to interest a management.'

  'I already have,' he drawled in pretended indifference.

  She sat up. 'Who?'

  'Phil.' Macey stretched his long body in a yawn. 'We talked it over three months ago. I outlined the idea and he said he liked it. He wanted a new play for the spring.'

  'He hasn't read it yet, though?'

  'I wanted you to read it first. I couldn't have done it if you rejected the idea.'

  'It's good,' she said gently. 'Far too good for me to stand in your light, Macey.'

  He turned his dark head and sunlight glinted on his blue eyes, the strong line of cheek and jaw relaxed as he lay there. Macey had looks which were distinctly individual, the intelligence behind the blue eyes sharpening the impact of his features. His mouth was beautifully formed and powerful with a discipline which the fleshless structure of his face reinforced.

  'Now that I've your promise to take the lead, nothing will stand in my light. Such a big star, darling!'

  'I don't know why I put up with that tongue of yours,' Clare told him with amusement.

  'You love me,' Macey murmured, his mouth twisting sardonically.

  'Oh, is that it? It's news to me.'

  She caught the blue flash of his eyes and heard him laugh under his breath. 'No wonder our famous friend said you were a frigid little bitch,' Macey drawled.

  She had told him about her last encounter with the great heart-throb of the silver screen. She told Macey everything—everything except the one fact about her that made sense of everything else.

  The telephone rang distantly in the house and with a deep groan Macey pulled himself out of the chair. 'That can't be anyone I want to talk to, but I suppose I'll have to answer it.'

  She watched him walk away, his black shadow moving on the ground behind him in dancing mimicry. Even now there was the faintest resemblance in Macey to the man who had destroyed her emotional resources that night long ago. It was not in the features that that fleeting impression lay—it was merely in his colouring, his build. At a quick glance she could still feel her heart beat sickeningly when Macey moved, especially if she did not see his face.

  Macey's play had brought it all back to her mind, not that it was ever far away. She had had it in the background of her head for nine long years, and she was unable to forget a second of that night.

  She lay back in the lounger with the dark glasses shielding her eyes, and the sun pouring down over her relaxed body, listening to the far-off whisper of the sea on the rocky shore.

  I must have a great capacity for love, she thought ironically. I'm a concentrated hater.

  She had only met him once, so briefly, but if she closed her eyes she could always remember him.

  All the men she had ever met had failed to get through the ice crystals which had formed on her that night. She lay in the sun, shivering, as though it were deepest winter. She had flown like Icarus too close to the heat of the sun and plunged, like him, the false wax melting, drowning in cold seas.

  He was a myth to her now, something not quite real which had shaped her at a formative moment in her life, and in some ways, Clare thought wryly, she owed him a debt of gratitude because she had been so very young for her age; bemused and bewildered by London after a strangely innocent upbringing. If she hadn't met him that night, sooner or later she would have met someone else who would have attempted to use her in the same way, but with more lasting results. He had been a grim warning to her. She had learnt from that brief experience to keep men at a distance, refuse to let them blackmail, bribe, coax her. She had climbed in her profession by talent alone, rejecting all the quicker routes which her looks would have made so easy.

  She was under no illusions about that. She had been offered such chances again and again. Clare knew that many girls with ambition accepted them, shrugging philosophically, but she had never noticed that it got them far. In the last resort, talent was all that mattered.

  Clare had changed radically from that New Year party. The innocent wide-eyed girl had become a sophisticated woman of twenty-seven whose huge green eyes and sensuous body were plastered all over magazines and posters. Her hair had been styled in light, curling strands which blew around her head, making her look like a sexy boy until one saw the rounded body below her head.

  The wind lifted them now and blew them restlessly and Macey dropped down beside her suddenly, brushing his hand across the windswept curls in a light caress.

  'That was Rowena.'

  'Rowena?' she queried.

  'She's at Nice and wants us to drive over for dinner tonight.'

  'You didn't accept?' Clare felt too heavily relaxed to sit around talking to people this evening. She did not want to stir. She had been working very hard during the past year and this was her first real break.

  'People don't refuse Rowena's invitations.'

  'I would have.'

  Macey laughed drily. 'I can just hear you! You're scared stiff of her.'

  'Who isn't?' Clare smiled at him, her eyes hidden behind the dark glasses. Rowena had a frozen stare when anyone attempted to treat her as anything but the very pinnacle of perfection. For forty years she had sat up there; a worshipped goddess, smiling benignly on her adoring audiences, her briefest utterances treated as divine writ. Clare would not seriously challenge Rowena's divinity.

  'What time shall we have to leave?' she asked, sighing in resigned acceptance.

  'Six-thirty,' Macey told her, his eyes amused. 'Which just gives you time to make yourself beautiful if you start now.' His wicked eyes mocked her.

  'I'm too lazy to hit you, so shut up,' she told him, stretching herself with a graceful, supple movement which kept Macey's eyes pinned to her. Clare was not unaware of his stare, but she was too used to it to do more than register in passing that Macey was conscious of the sensuous lines of her figure. Macey was male, very much so, but Clare had no alarm when he watched her. Custom had made him safe for her.

  'You've never worked with Rowena, have you?' Macey asked some time later, and she shook her head. 'Like to?'

  The casual tone made her turn her head abruptly, staring at him sharply. She jumped at it in a flash, her eyes widening. 'You aren't hoping to interest her in the part of the vile old harridan in the boarding house?'

  Macey assumed a bland smile. 'She could read it, I suppose.'

  Clare whistled under her breath. 'You've got nerve, I'll say that for you!'

  'Of course,' he said in self-satisfaction. 'I'm a genius.' 'And modest with it,' she said, starting to laugh. Surveying him with amusement, she added, 'Darling Macey, she wouldn't touch it with a bargepole.' 'We'll see,' said Macey.

  'Who are you getting for the old man? Now, who's so famous that his name would drag them in off the streets if he was reading the telephone directory?' 'I want the best cast I can get.' 'So I see, you shrinking little violet. I'm honoured you came tame first.'

  'So you should be,' he informed her with a wicked little smile which made his blue eyes as bright as the far-off sea. 'You're going to dazzle them in it.'

  'Don't think I can't read you like a book. I shall expect a cut of the royalties—fifty per cent, I think. Having been so cleverly cannibalised I feel I deserve it.' 'You aren't annoyed?' His quick look was intent.

  Clare studied him. 'Would it make any difference if I were?'

  'You could sue.'

  'So I could.' Clare closed her eyes, pushing her sunglasses back up her nose. 'I'll think about it.'

  There was a long silence. The olive trees rustled busily in the sea breeze and a bee hummed happily as it raided the roses.

  'How close was I, Clare?'

  The quiet, level question made her tense, but she kept her eyes shut and her face did n
ot give a thing away. 'Mmm?' she murmured in a drowsy voice.

  'Was that how it happened?'

  'What are we talking about?' she enquired, pretending to yawn.

  'Something like that happened,' Macey went on coolly. 'When I met you, you were already locked up tight and you've stayed like it ever since. At first I just thought you were as cold as charity, but over the years I've come to know you too well to believe that any more. Someone, somewhere, hit you so hard you've never given anyone else a chance to get within a foot of you.'

  'Thank you, Doctor Freud, and goodnight,' Clare drawled, flapping a lazy hand over her mouth in a mock yawn.

  He laughed shortly. 'Okay, I'll drop the subject, but you're too lovely to waste your sweetness on the desert air, Clare. In all the years I've known you, you've never looked twice at anyone, but on stage you give out excitement like an electric storm. It has to be in there, waiting for the right man.' His voice deepened, grew husky. 'What are you looking for, Clare? Don't you know me well enough to give me a tiny clue?'

  'I'm very fond of you, Macey,' Clare said, keeping her eyes shut and struggling to keep her voice cool, 'but if you don't shut up I'll take the first plane back to London.'

  After that, he didn't say a single thing.

  CHAPTER THREE

  She slid back into a physical relaxation which did not match the tormented confusion of her thoughts. Macey and his damned, play had brought it all back too vividly for her. She could still wince at the memory of her eighteen-year-old self walking blindly, blissfully into strange arms on a tide of romantic illusion which had ended, as all illusion ends, in tears and betrayal.

  Luke had been so irresistibly attractive, the physical allure matched by a smiling charm, and she had been far too romantic; wide-eyed with the belief that love, true love, was waiting round a corner for her. She had not thought beyond each magic moment of that evening. While he was kissing her, she had been rapt on a tide of delight, never suspecting how far his intentions went because love, to her, had been a question of emotion rather than physical pleasure.