‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m quite enjoying it,’ he replied. ‘More than I expected, certainly. Much more.’
‘Yes, but what about your own writing? You’ve done virtually nothing since we arrived,’ the woman replied. She was still pasted against Ran, and Rena was chagrined to notice he made no attempt whatsoever to pull away.
Damn him! He knew perfectly well she was watching, knew she was poised like a burglar at the top of the stairs. How could he possibly force her to watch such a performance after the lovemaking they had just shared?
‘My own writing isn’t suffering,’ he replied casually, one arm sliding out to wrap itself about the woman’s slender waist in a gesture that made Rena’s heart seethe with white hate. She fairly writhed with her anger as the woman insinuated herself within the circle of Ran’s arm; an arm that only minutes before had been circled around Rena’s own even more slender waist.
Valerie Dunn’s throaty chuckle was like a purr of pleasure, but Rena could see — if Ran could not — the true expression of long-suffering patience on the woman’s face. She was shocked at such obvious duplicity; surely Ran could tell that he was simply being used for some selfish purpose by his secretary?
Rena couldn’t hear what Valerie said next, because it was whispered into Ran’s only-too-willing ear. She could do nothing but stay in her place and wonder as the two people below her shifted to the doorway and finally went inside.
When the door had closed and the lights went out to plunge the outside of the two-storey house into stygian darkness, Rena sat huddled like some gargoyle, unwilling to move, unable to trust the holocaust of emotion within her.
Certainly what came next was obvious enough. Her eyes had seen the evidence in Valerie Dunn’s sinuous approaches. If Ran were to suffer any withdrawal symptoms from having his lovemaking interrupted, it wouldn’t be for lack of effort on his secretary’s part to solve the problem.
And for Rena? Certainly she had no opportunity to salve her own trembling body’s physical needs, much less the far more important mental conflicts that threatened her. How could Ran do such a thing?
Couldn’t he see, blind or not, that he was being used?
Or, said the demon voice of pure jealousy within her, did he see it only too well, but consider it a small price to pay for the gratification of his physical needs and a means to punish Rena for ... for what? She had done nothing, except to let her damnably treacherous body once more take command of its own destiny. But then, he was a user … she already knew that!
When she finally crept silently into her own flat, moving with infinite caution and cursing herself for the guilt she felt — although how much more guilty, she wondered, to have been surprised by Valerie Dunn a few minutes later? — at allowing herself to succumb to the temptations of Ran Logan yet again.
‘You’re a fool, Catherine Conley Everett,’ she whispered to herself once she had gained the lonely sanctuary of her own bed. ‘A blind, stupid, gullible fool. At least Valerie Dunn may get some benefit out of letting Ran Logan use her; you get nothing but more pain, more heartache.’
It was obvious enough, but it did nothing to solve the even more obvious problem. Rena loved Ran Logan, had never stopped loving him despite his betrayal, and would go on loving him despite his totally callous disregard for her and her feelings.
She glanced at her bedside clock just before drifting off into a troubled sleep, and was surprised to find it was only just past midnight. Six hours later the first rays of sub-tropical sunshine peeped through her window, demanding to be noticed and consistently oblivious to her need to sleep.
Sunday; a day of rest. But how to rest, when inside her mind a kaleidoscope of images whirled in frenetic circles to prick annoyingly at her most base emotions — jealousy, anger, hatred. And fear. Fear that she could never, ever, come to terms with herself and the influence Ran Logan had held, would hold, in her life.
She showered, washed her long hair and conditioned it, ate what was, for her, a hearty breakfast. And every second of the time her mind was obsessed with Ran ... her ears cocked for any sound of life, of movement in the flat below. She fought off mental visions of what must have happened after Ran and Valerie had re-entered their flat the evening before.
Fought them off, but not for long and not completely enough to alleviate her own cravings, her own inner tensions. It was one thing, in the cold light of dawn, to intellectually theorise that Ran had only played up to Valerie to divert the woman’s attention. But quite another to deny the green-eyed monster of jealousy within Rena herself.
How could she possibly survive another month and a half of Ran’s presence? She wouldn’t, she realised only too well, be able to avoid him entirely. If nothing else, she must see him, be in close contact with him, each Wednesday evening. It would be pointless and silly to give up the writing classes in the existing circumstances.
But none of this solved the problem of today and what to do with it. She must get away from the house. Perhaps a drive, an afternoon touring the various art galleries, a long, solitary stroll along the beach? None appealed, and yet her logic told her she couldn’t possibly stay home, not with the likelihood of having to face Ran yet again, and this time probably Valerie Dunn as well.
In any event, it was too early to go anywhere if it meant taking her aged car. The shuddering, coughing roar of it starting up would be guaranteed to wake up those below, so Rena sat herself at the kitchen table and tried to concentrate on some new songs she was working up for her Monday night gigs.
That, at least, seemed to help her troubled mind. Within half an hour she was so deeply immersed in the exercise that at first she didn’t even hear the argument which had begun on the floor below. It wasn’t until Valerie Dunn said loudly, ‘But that’s totally absurd!’ that Rena pricked up her ears.
‘I don’t see what’s so absurd about it.’ Ran’s voice, that rich, melodious voice she knew so well. ‘You don’t like it here, and there’s no sense in denying it. I’m not helpless, as you very well know. And besides, with this Everett girl living right upstairs, I don’t see the hassle.’
‘The Everett girl, I might remind you, has to work for a living,’ snapped Valerie. ‘Every day, which means you’d be quite alone here during the day.’
‘Which would suit me right down to the ground,’ Ran replied implacably. ‘I don’t need to be mothered; I will not be mothered. And certainly I shouldn’t have to remind you that these affairs in Sydney must be handled in person — by you — and handled properly.’
‘Oh, pooh! I could do it just as well by telephone,’ was the reply, but the tone of voice suggested an imminent compliance; Valerie was arguing for the sake of argument, and even Rena, judging by voice alone, could tell that.
Her arguments, Rena wasn’t overjoyed to realise, fairly well paralleled Rena’s own of the night before, although they went into detail she hadn’t so much as considered. But finally Valerie Dunn appeared to agree. Then came the big surprise.
‘Of course we still have to ascertain if Miss Everett will agree to this,’ the woman said. ‘And why you insist on inviting her to dinner tonight to broach the subject, I can’t imagine. What are we going to talk about, for goodness’ sake? She is, after all, hardly more than a child, Randall. And I daresay a fairly unsophisticated one at that, living in this place.’
‘Good,’ snapped Ran, for the first time revealing how close he had come to the raw edge of his temper. ‘Then if we stick to very small, two-syllable words, maybe it won’t be too hard for her to realise that her only place in this is to keep a weather eye on things and not go interfering in my life. Now are you going up to issue the invitation, or shall I?’
‘I shall,’ said Valerie, and Rena could see the woman shaking her auburn head in displeasure. ‘What’s more, I’ll do it now; I heard some noise a while ago, so she must be up already. Probably used to getting up early to feed chickens, or slop hogs or something.’
Rena didn’t hear the reply in her frenz
ied scurry to get an elastic band round her hair in an impromptu ponytail and fling on the first clothes that came to hand — those she had been wearing the night before.
She barely had herself physically organised before the expected knock on her door, but she was totally, completely organised in her head. She would, she had immediately decided, refuse the invitation. Gracefully, regretfully, even. But she would refuse.
Five minutes later it was over. She would be joining Ran and his secretary for dinner at seven-thirty that evening, and she still didn’t know what demon had taken over her tongue, changing gracious refusal into gracious acceptance without so much as a faltering word.
‘I must be mad! Stark, raving, irrevocably mad,’ she told herself in the mirror as the dinner hour approached and she stood naked, staring at herself and quite incapable of deciding what to wear.
Not that it mattered, certainly. Ran couldn’t see her and Valerie Dunn’s opinion was of little importance in the long run. Rena had one dress which she knew would perfectly suit the older woman’s pre-formed opinion of her. It had been one of her quasi-costumes when singing in Sydney, a sort of peasant dress in gay gingham, with puffy sleeves and a broad, squared-off neckline. In it, with her hair short as it had been then, she had looked about sixteen. Given a ponytail of her much longer hair today and she might gain one year, but hardly more than two.
She looked at herself, then at the dress, then turned to the dress she had worn on that first, unforgettable dinner date with Ran. Coil up her hair and wear that dress, and Valerie Dunn would choke on her own words!
The thought gave her a savage satisfaction, but sanity and the gingham dress won. Rena deliberately ignored the voice inside her that applauded the choice as a major deterrent to the other woman changing her mind about leaving Ran alone.
‘The last thing I want anyway is to be left alone with him,’ she lied to herself in the mirror. ‘He’s a bastard ... an unscrupulous bastard who uses people and then discards them. He’s done it to me once and he’ll do it again, once this damned writing course is over.’
For one brief instant she contemplated throwing off the dress and simply flouting the invitation. She could just get in Matilda and drive away, she thought. Who could really object? Certainly not Ran, and Valerie Dunn was unlikely to bother. But she couldn’t, in the end, and at seven-thirty precisely she knocked on the door of the flat below and presented herself like a lamb to the slaughter.
The evening was, she decided later, undeniably, unforgettably, unbelievably farcical! Like something from a bad comedy. Black comedy.
Ran — wonder of wonders — had cooked the dinner, and he made much of his comical efforts to peel potatoes, slice young green beans and season the small leg of lamb that was the main course. Almost, Rena decided, as if he was trying to prove something. His independence? While his recounting of the effort proved to be delightful comedy, it was not helped any by a continuous round of sniping from Valerie Dunn, who played hostess with an ill-disguised lack of enthusiasm.
It came as no surprise that Ran pretended this was his first-ever meeting with Rena, a charade both of them managed rather well, she thought later.
No mention was made of the writing classes, except in passing, derogatory comments from Valerie, nor of Ran’s proposal that Rena should act as his Wednesday evening chauffeur. He quite deliberately kept the dinner conversation to broad general topics, ignoring Valerie’s condescending attitude which came so close to outright rudeness that Rena had to bite her tongue on more than one occasion.
And when the subject of Rena ‘looking out for me’ came up. Ran chose to pass it off almost as an incidental afterthought. Valerie Dunn was much less casual, but nowhere near as difficult about the whole thing as Rena might have expected.
In Rena’s eyes, the entire evening had an aura of fantasy about it. She and Ran seemed co-conspirators in a ludicrous, senseless black comedy. It was like a mingling of nightmares from which she felt certain to awake in another time, another place.
Not until she returned, quite early, to her own flat did Rena gradually begin to realise the skill with which Ran had manipulated the entire evening. More than the evening, the entire exercise of shifting Valerie Dunn out of his immediate future and Rena, despite her better judgment and/or lack thereof, into it.
Rena drifted into sleep that night wondering if she should not have listened to her better judgment. There was something involved in all this that she didn’t quite understand, and the fact that Ran Logan certainly did understand didn’t help her one little bit.
She left for work early on Monday morning, thus sparing herself the dubious pleasure of witnessing Valerie’s departure for the airport and the morning flight south. And she didn’t bother to go home for dinner, but treated herself to a counter tea at the pub before embarking upon her evening’s work as an entertainer.
It was one of her best nights ever. The audience, in general, was young, enthusiastic, and most of all — loudly appreciative. She had no time to worry about returning to a house empty but for herself and Ran Logan, no time to wonder if she had allowed herself to be manipulated into something too dangerous for her own good.
She sang a lot of her own compositions during the evening, interspersing them with favourites like ‘Greensleeves’, ‘Kilgary Moimtain’ and the various Roger Whittaker songs she both loved and sang very well. Much of the time the audience sang with her, but even silent they went through a ‘power of grog’ in the words of her overjoyed publican employer.
She joined him and his pleasant wife for drinks just before closing, almost regretfully turning down his invitation to double her engagements to two nights each week.
‘It’s just not possible right now,’ she replied, but promised herself that one day ... when Ran had finally gone ... then refused to let herself think of that day. It would come all too soon as it was.
It was less easy not to think about Ran during the long drive home, a drive during which she couldn’t help but wonder if he would be waiting up, expecting to talk to her.
He wasn’t, and she went to bed unsure if she was relieved or disappointed, lying in the pale moonlight with her ears knowingly alert to every nuance of sound in the flat below.
On Tuesday she didn’t see him at all, which quite surprised her. Almost, indeed, to the point where she seriously debated the wisdom of going down to check on him when she returned home from work. But she didn’t ... and went to bed that night wondering whether she had done the right thing.
Rena spent a troubled night, part of her mind congratulating herself for being strong, for not allowing herself to fall for yet another Ran Logan ploy. Another part, however, worried. What if he’d fallen? What if he’d wandered off and got lost? What if ...?
She needn’t have worried; he was standing, a tall, lithe figure in faded blue jeans and a light T-shirt, waiting when she descended to her car the next morning.
‘Any special place you’d like to have dinner tonight?’ he asked without so much as a ‘good morning’ or ‘how are you?’ Then he grinned, a most engaging, little-boy grin. ‘Or have you decided creative writing isn’t your thing after all?’ he asked.
Rena chose to ignore the disarming grin. ‘I’ve decided you seem to be taking a great deal for granted,’ she replied in her coolest voice. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to send your secretary away as you did.’
‘Meeeow!’ he retorted with a wider grin. ‘I’ll bet you’re even more beautiful when you’re touched by the old green-eyed monster.’
Rena gasped at the audacity of it, but before she could speak he was in ahead of her.
‘Aw, go ahead and deny it,’ he jibed. ‘I’m sure both Louise and Valerie would be heartened, truly heartened, to know you’re not in the least bit jealous.’
‘You conceited ... egotistical …’ Rena couldn’t go on. Her tongue was twisted into a knot that defied untangling. Her temper was creating a furnace inside her, but what could she do?
Ran
blithely ignored her. ‘How about we eat Chinese?’ he asked as if it were the most logical question in the world, ‘I manage quite well with chopsticks for a bloke who can’t see what he’s doing.’
‘I think you’ve got your nerve!’ she snapped, and then parroted his last remark in a high falsetto, before adding, ‘How about we eat Australian, so I can watch you drooling pie and sauce all down the front of your stuffed shirt?’
‘Oooh, aren’t we bitter?’ he retorted. ‘Your trouble, Rena, is that you’ve got no sense of humour. It’s all doom ... doom ... doom, with you.’
‘And who wouldn’t cry doom?’ she snapped, all patience lost, ‘being stuck with an egotistical, womanising cripple!’
‘Now you’re getting personal,’ he replied without a hint of being upset by her remark. ‘At least you could try fighting clean, although I suppose it’s too much to expect from a confirmed man hater.’
‘Clean? You wouldn’t know the meaning of the word!’ she snarled. All the worry and frustration of the past few days boiled to the surface in a flood of undiluted rage. ‘You’re nothing but a deceitful swine. Ran Logan, and I ... I ... hate you!’
‘Okay,’ he replied calmly, his tone of voice and attitude clearly designed to make her more angry still. ‘But that still doesn’t solve the problem about what we’re having for dinner tonight.’ He was so calm, so agreeable, so damned, deliberately agreeable.
‘Well, as far as I’m concerned you can starve to death,’ she cried. ‘And if you’re depending on me to make sure you’re fed, you very well might just!’
‘I am long past the stage of depending on a mere woman to ensure I’m fed,’ he retorted. ‘But not past the stage of inviting my chauffeur to join in my humble repast. So it’ll be Chinese, then. What time shall I expect you?’
‘You’re impossible!’
‘No,’ he replied with maddening calm, ‘just a wee bit improbable. Shall we say five-thirty? Or would six suit you better?’
‘Shall we say never?’ she retorted, voice alive with an anger she couldn’t release because he wouldn’t let her, wouldn’t help her.
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