by Anne Weale
She jumped to her feet. ‘You’re quite mistaken, Mr. Lancaster. I’m not seeking anything like that. I came here because Laura gave me the impression that it was the kind of party which a woman could attend without her husband.’ To give weight to her rebuttal, she added. ‘I’ve been married less than two months. Women don’t usually tire of their husbands as soon as that, even in your world.’
‘It depends on the age of the husband. I’ve known more than one marriage where the wife was bored before the wedding, and hoping it wouldn’t be long before she became a rich widow,’ he retorted, his mouth curling under the dark moustache which extended beyond and below the line of his lips.
‘My marriage isn’t like that. My husband is not an old man.’
At this point the manservant returned pushing a trolley laden with appetising things which made her realise that, having had nothing but an omelette for lunch and that eight hours ago, she was hungrier than she had thought.
‘Thank you, Hew Meng. You needn’t wait. I’ll deal with the bottle,’ said Roddy. When the man had disappeared, he locked the door, saying to Antonia, ‘Don’t get the wrong idea. This is merely to prevent us being disturbed by anyone else in search of privacy, although it’s early for that.’
He filled a plate with fresh salmon and spoonfuls of various salads, then he shook out a large linen napkin and draped it across her lap before handing the plate to her.
Presently, discovering that she had grown up in Spain, he said, ‘I know most of the Continent pretty well, but in Spain I’ve been only to Barcelona and Benidorm.’
‘Oh, but Benidorm isn’t Spain,’ she said, pulling a face. ‘It was beautiful once, before they built all the hotels. Now it’s vulgar and horrible.’
‘That sounds like the voice of someone who has always lived in pleasant places. If you’d grown up in a factory town in England or Germany, two weeks in the sun in Benidorm might seem like paradise to you.’
‘Yes, perhaps you’re right,’ she admitted. ‘Where is your home town, Mr. Lancaster?’
He grinned at her. ‘If you’ll stop being formal, I’ll tell you the story of my life.’
It was not the’ champagne—she had only one glass, and he did not press her to drink another—which made her find him a pleasant companion. By the time they had finished their supper, she felt she had known him for far longer than one hour.
‘Now I’ll run you back to London,’ he said. ‘And don’t worry, I only drive fast on race-tracks. I’m not one of the ton-up boys in the ordinary way.’
‘I must find my sister-in-law and tell her I’m leaving.’
‘I shouldn’t bother. Hew Meng will give her a message. If I know Laura, she’ll be quite high by now, and will probably end up by spending the night in one of my visitors’ beds.’
‘High?’ Antonia repeated.
‘Tiddley ... one over the eight... smashed ... stoned out of her mind.’
‘Oh, no!’ she exclaimed distressfully.
‘Not always, but often enough. Didn’t your husband warn you about her?’
‘I don’t think he knows that she drinks too much.’
‘And not only drinks,’ he said dryly. ‘She’s a pretty wild girl, little Laura. But it’s no use your worrying about her,’ he added, seeing her concern. ‘She’s old enough to know there’s a precipice ahead, and to slam on the brakes if she wants to.’
As he had promised, the journey back was far less hair-raising than motoring north with her sister-in-law. Roddy had a fast car, but even on the motorway he kept well under the limit and allowed other cars to sweep past him. Obviously all his aggression and competitiveness were purged when he drove professionally.
They did not talk much until, nearing Swiss Cottage, he said, ‘The night’s still young. Would you like to dance for an hour?’
‘Oh, no—no, thank you. My husband wouldn’t like it.’
‘I don’t suppose he would, but would you?’
Antonia hesitated. ‘If I’d met you before I was married, I should have liked it very much, Roddy. But now I belong to Cal.’
‘Will you tell him I brought you home?’
‘Of course. Why not? He’ll be grateful to you.’
When they reached her house, he switched off the engine and walked round the bonnet to open the nearside door for her.
‘I’ll see you safely indoors,’ he said, when she would have shaken hands and said goodbye on the pavement.
‘What time is it?’ she asked. The face of the gold evening watch which had been a seventeenth birthday present from her father was too small to be seen by the dim light of stars and street-lamps.
‘It’s only a little after midnight.’
She hunted in her bag for her latch-key, and he took it out of her hand to unlock the front door for her. Then he paused and, before she realised what he meant to do, he had kissed her lightly on the lips.
It was at precisely this moment that the door was opened, not by Marcos, but by Cal. Antonia gasped with surprise.
‘Cal! You’re back,’ she exclaimed.
‘Where the devil have you been?’ he demanded.
‘T-to a party.’ She had never heard him speak so roughly. ‘This is Roddy Lancaster ... the racing driver.’ For a horrible moment she thought her husband was going to hit him, and evidently the same thought occurred to Roddy as he stepped swiftly backwards and said, ‘I’ll be on my way. Goodnight, Antonia. Goodnight’—to her fierce-looking husband.
‘Wait a moment!’ Cal’s tone was like flint. ‘I have something to say to you, Lancaster. Don’t let me catch you in my wife’s company again. If I do, you’ll regret it.’
‘Cal, how can you?’ she protested. ‘You don’t understand. He’s been very kind to me ... rescued me. You’ve no right to threaten him.’
‘Have I not?’ was Cal’s curt retort. ‘For your information I’ll threaten any man who touches you. You’re my wife, or had it slipped your mind?’
As she flinched from his accusatory rasp, Roddy intervened. ‘You have it wrong, Mr. Barnard. Your wife made it clear from the outset that she wasn’t interested in anyone but yourself. If you hadn’t opened the door and forestalled her, I’ve no doubt she would have given me a dressing-down herself. You have every right to let fly at me, but please don’t blame her for something she couldn’t have prevented. As for why she was with me in the first place ... I should let her explain that in greater detail before you jump to any more wrong conclusions. Goodnight.’ He walked briskly down the path.
After watching him go for a moment, Antonia hurried inside and would have gone straight to her room. But Cal shut the door and caught her before she reached the stairs.
‘Lancaster slid out of that situation very glibly. I’d like a more satisfactory explanation from you. Where have you been tonight, and why didn’t you leave a telephone number where I could contact you?’
He caught her above her left elbow and swung her to face him, gripping her other arm as well. His fingers were painfully tight.
‘I ... it never occurred to me that you might want to contact me. Your sister invited me to go out with her, but I—I developed a headache and Roddy kindly brought me home.’
‘For which service you were not averse to rewarding him. Perhaps, had I not interrupted, you might even have asked him to come in,’ was Cal’s savage comment.
‘You must know I should never have done that.’
‘Do I? How do I know it?’ Suddenly he jerked her against him, pressing her slender body to his powerful frame, almost as if he wanted her to feel his superior strength, and to know how helpless she would be if he chose to overpower her.
‘If you can kiss him goodnight, you can kiss me goodnight.’ he said thickly, and his face swooped on hers, as suddenly and relentlessly as the fall of a hawk on its prey.
It was the first time he had kissed her since the night he had lost his self-control. As his mouth came down on hers she would, had it been only passion he felt, have opened her li
ps and slid her arms round his neck. But the anger she felt in him frightened her civilised self even though, deep down, some more primitive part of her thrilled to the brutal mastery of his muscular arms.
Before the two sides of her nature had resolved their conflict, Cal’s urge to punish was spent. He let her go, said brusquely, ‘We’ll talk in the morning,’ and disappeared down the hall.
It was he who brought her breakfast tray. ‘Where did Laura take you last night?’ he asked, without any preliminary.
‘To a party which I thought was in London, but which turned out to be at Roddy’s house in the country.’
‘I see. Well, I’m not going to apologise for misunderstanding the situation last night. When I got back, expecting to find you here, and Marcos told me you’d gone off to an unknown destination with my sister, it gave me several bad hours. Laura’s circle of acquaintance includes some pretty rotten types, the kind you might not be able to handle if they started getting out of hand.’
He stood at the end of the bed, watching her. Her nightdress was finely flowered cotton with a shirred yoke, too full to be revealing.
‘I remember telling you that Laura wasn’t your type,’ he went on. ‘But I didn’t think you’d have much to do with each other or I should have warned you she mixes with a fast crowd. Lancaster may be a cut above some of them, he doesn’t scruple to kiss another man’s wife.’ Seeing the flash of anger in his blue eyes, she said hastily, ‘He says Laura drinks too much. Is there nothing we can do to help her?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve been rescuing Laura from troubles of her own making since she was sixteen. If she hasn’t learned from experience, she won’t learn from further lectures from me, or appeals from you. Some people are born to make a disaster of their lives, and my sister appears to be one of them. It’s a pity, but there’s nothing one can do about it.’
‘Surely one should never give up trying?’
He said shrewdly, ‘Did you really have a headache last night? Or is the truth of the matter that you found yourself in a situation you didn’t like?’
‘It wasn’t the kind of party I’d expected,’ she admitted.
‘Don’t waste your pity on Laura, because she wouldn’t have come to your rescue if you’d been in difficulties. It’s more than likely that her motive for taking you was to annoy me. Anyway, don’t ever go out again while I’m away without leaving an address and telephone number.’
‘No, I won’t. I’m sorry you were anxious about me.’
He glanced at his watch. ‘I must go. I’ll see you tonight.’
The next day Laura rang up and, recognising Antonia’s voice, said, without any preliminary, ‘What a dark horse you turned out to be, running off with Roddy like that! What would Big Brother have to say if he found out, I wonder?’ Her tone was chaffing. ‘Don’t worry: he won’t hear about it from me.’
‘If you mean Cal, he knows. He got back from his trip sooner than he expected and was here when Roddy brought me home.’
‘Oh, my lord! Was he furious?’
‘He was annoyed that I hadn’t left a note saying where I was going.’
‘Only annoyed? Knowing Cal, I should have thought that if another man brought you home in the small hours, he would have blown his top. Where did Roddy take you?’
‘Nowhere. We came straight home. Didn’t you get my message?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t take it too seriously. I concluded that you and he had hit it off, and had gone for a night on the town. Catherine was livid, I can tell you.’
‘Who is Catherine?’
‘Roddy’s girl-friend—or maybe his ex-girl-friend now. Didn’t you meet her? A redhead in a green jumpsuit.’
‘No, I didn’t meet her, and there was no reason for her to be livid. Mr. Lancaster was merely being considerate to a guest who wasn’t feeling well.’ Antonia felt it was politic to keep up the fiction that she had left the party early for that reason.
‘You mean you actually did feel rotten? Oh, I’m sorry about that. Could it be pregnancy sickness as soon as this? Surely not?’
‘No, I’m not pregnant. It was a bad headache. I get them occasionally. I’m sorry it meant that you had to drive home alone.’
‘It didn’t. I stayed the night—or what was left of it by the time people started to leave. About half of them stayed for breakfast. When I do have a night off from work, I like to make the most of it.’
Presently Laura rang off, leaving Antonia to ponder the jaundiced view of human nature which caused Laura to think that, within a few weeks of marriage, her sister-in-law might not be averse to some extramarital frolics when Cal’s back was turned. Or was it that Laura knew that her brother was playing the same game and, with her views on equality between the sexes, felt that if a man was unfaithful, his wife was entitled to diversions of her own?
About ten days later Cal had to go abroad again. ‘Couldn’t I come with you this time?’ Antonia asked him.
‘Had I been staying in an hotel, yes, you could have done so,’ he answered. ‘But for the first two nights I’m staying in a private house, and a repetition of our experience at the Marshalls’ might prove too much for my good intentions. It’s one thing to share a suite, or even a room with you. To have to share the same bed would strain the control of a saint—which I am not.’
On the second night of his absence, Antonia had family supper with the Rankins. Tom was away from home that night, and after the meal the children dispersed to other parts of the house, leaving their mother and her guest alone in the drawing-room.
‘You don’t mind if I work on this stool cover while we chat, I hope?’ said Fanny, producing a piece of fine brown canvas half covered with a zig-zag pattern in colours shading from dark to pale green and through all the tones of apricot. ‘Are you a needlewoman, Antonia?’
‘Not at present, but I should like to be. I was admiring your beautiful cushions the last time we came here, and wondering if I could do something similar.’
‘Oh, yes, easily. Canvas work is not at all difficult. It should be done on an embroidery frame for the best results, but I find that to use a frame cuts down my progress. I often do it in the car, and I always take some work with me if we’re travelling by air and may be delayed for hours on end. Would you like to try your hand at it now? I can give you an oddment of canvas and some wools.’
She took Antonia up to her sewing room where a dressmaker’s dummy was wearing a shirt she was making for one of her daughters, and on the large cutting-out table a pattern for an evening skirt was pinned to a length of material.
‘I had to make my own clothes when Tom and I were first married because we had so little money, and now I do it for pleasure,’ she explained. ‘Also I’m not at all keen on synthetic materials, and not many ready-made clothes are pure wool or cotton nowadays. I love the haute couture feel of a dress lined with batiste or silk.’
Before Antonia went home that night, she had worked the first two or three rows of a flame-stitch cushion cover on a piece of canvas and with wools which Fanny said she could spare. She found the work so compulsive that, after she went to bed, she spent another hour on it, and resumed it the following morning.
From mid-morning on she was alone in the house, Rocío and Marcos having gone out for the day. During the afternoon, someone rang the doorbell and, when she went to answer it, Antonia was surprised to find Fanny on the doorstep.
‘Fanny! How nice. Come in,’ she said, with a pleased smile. ‘What are you doing in our neighbourhood?’—assuming that, as they had seen each other the night before, this must be an impromptu visit in passing. ‘I’ve been working on the cushion all day, and I’ve done several inches. But at the moment I’m unpicking because I’ve made a mistake.’ As she spoke, she closed the front door and led the way to the sitting-room.
‘Yes, it’s easily done if one’s mind wanders off for a moment,’ Fanny answered.
Something in her tone made Antonia look at her more closely, and she saw that this
afternoon Fanny’s face, usually so tranquil, had a strained expression.
‘There’s nothing wrong, is there? The children—?’
‘No, no, the children are fine. But I’m afraid I have some rather worrying news for you, my dear. I’d better give it to you straight. Cal’s plane has been hijacked.’
‘Hijacked?’ Antonia echoed. ‘How do you know?’
‘The news isn’t public yet. It was Telexed to his London office by the people with whom he’s been staying, and the office telephoned me. Apparently Cal left instructions that if anything like this should ever happen to him, they were to contact me or Tom so that you’d have someone with you when you heard about it.’
As if Antonia were one of her daughters, she put her arms round her and hugged her. ‘I’ll stay with you until we hear that it’s all over and he’s on his way home. He’ll come through all right, I’m sure of it. Cal has nine lives.’
For a moment Antonia leaned against her, limp with shock. Then she pulled herself together, and asked, ‘Who’s hijacked the plane? Do you know?’
‘No, nobody has any details yet. I’m going to fix us both a drink.’ Fanny moved towards the drinks cupboard. ‘But I should switch on the television,’ she added, over her shoulder, ‘because apparently there are several VIPs on board, and the BBC may interrupt the normal programme to make an announcement.’ Antonia did as she suggested, adjusting the volume control so that they could see the picture without hearing the sound.
‘I thought they had rigid checks at all airports now, so that no one could get on board a plane with weapons on them,’ she said.
Fanny brought her a gin and tonic. ‘It’s a stiff one, so don’t knock it back. Yes, I thought so, too, but I suppose after a long period without any trouble the security tends to slacken. Oh, damn these maniacal terrorists!’ she exclaimed, with sudden fervour. ‘They gain nothing for their cause, and they put hundreds, possibly thousands, of people through hours of agonising anxiety.’
Antonia said, ‘Yes, terrorism is one of the few subjects which makes Cal see red. He says it’s like piracy, centuries ago, and that was stamped out only because when pirates were caught they were executed.’
