A Bewitching Compulsion

by Susan Napier

  The Russian gave her a smoky smile. 'Au revoir, Clare,' he said in a voice that vibrated along her spine. Then, satisfied that he had had the last word, he turned and sprang jauntily down the steps, whistling something hauntingly familiar. The Jaguar gave a bearish kind of growl as it drew away from the kerb and Clare watched it go, full of misgivings. What other promises was he prepared to give, and honour, to her son?

  Virginia was all for Clare and Tim staying on another week until the concert, but Clare insisted on returning to Rotorua as planned. Tim's problems had meant he had missed quite a bit of schooling the previous year, and although he had quickly made up the academic gap, and indeed leapt ahead in some areas, she thought it important that his routine not be interrupted. She also thought that she had presumed enough on her friendship with Miles Parrish, owner of the Moonlight Lodge. Although, with the fishing season coming to a close, the lodge was only lightly booked for the next few weeks and undergoing renovations, there was always plenty for Clare to do. Miles's interests were many and varied, and even when he was in residence he trusted Clare with most of the responsibility for the smooth running of the lodge which, given its exclusive and wealthy clientele, used to the best of everything, was quite a task. Clare had had no formal training in hotel management, and had made some rather horrendous mistakes early on, but she was a quick learner and knew she owed Miles a great deal for allowing her the luxury of on-the-job training. The pay was good and the tips generous, and she and Tim received full board, so she had been able to save a comfortable amount in the past eighteen months. She and Lee had thought their happiness would last forever, and they hadn't seriously planned for the future. There had been no money when he'd died, and she'd known that Virginia's straitened circumstances had prevented her from offering anything but a roof over their heads and a free child-minding service while Clare had sought a secretarial job. Miles's offer, six months after Lee's death, had been a godsend. It had been a bit of a wrench to leave Auckland, where she had been born and brought up, but she had no family of her own there now and had been conscious of the need to forge a new life for herself and Tim. She had never regretted it.

  As it happened, Miles was away for the week, fishing in Florida with an American millionaire who shared his passion for salt-water fly-fishing. Miles had the spirit of an entrepreneur, and the money to indulge it. He intended making a series of videos on fishing around the world, and had persuaded his American friend to invest in it. As a consequence Clare had little time to brood about the concert she was constrained to attend, since the builder and the architect got into a battle royal about a flaw in the design of the extensions to the main lodge, and it was up to her to smooth things over, suggest a compromise and try and keep the two men from carrying their argument over to other aspects of the renovations. There was also the problem of a guest losing a valuable piece of jewellery, a generator failure that caused a meltdown in the freezer during a power-cut, a resignation, a minor flood in one of the guest cottages, and the death, from mysterious injuries, of one of Miles's favourite hunting dogs.

  Clare had planned to drive up to Auckland on the morning of the concert but, having been up the previous two nights—first nursing the dog, Chef, then helping stem the flood—Saturday got off to a very shaky start and it was afternoon before she and Tim set off in the lodge stationwagon which Miles had insisted she use whenever she needed it. It didn't help Clare to feel the ominous signs of a cold coming on, and the effort of concentration the four-hour drive took made her feel decidedly woolly by the time they turned into Virginia's driveway. It seemed to her tired brain that Tim had talked non-stop the whole trip, and come time for the concert he was still fresh and eager, whereas Clare felt like a limp piece of string.

  The woolliness in her head seemed also to have affected her ears for, sitting in their privileged seats in the stalls and trying, for Tim's benefit, to look as rapt as he thought the situation warranted, Clare seemed to be hearing everything through a lead filter. Her eyes, too, felt like lead, and she surreptitiously rested them every now and then, only afterwards admitting to herself that she might have fallen into a light doze or two. The concert, judging from the standing ovation that prompted two short, wittily introduced encores from the soloist, was a raging success, but Clare was hard put to it to remember anything about it, or the lavish supper that followed. She knew she talked to Deverenko and went through all the motions of eating and drinking and talking to innumerable strangers, but her brain had definitely been on hold. Fortunately nobody seemed to notice anything odd about her zombie-like politeness, and Virginia and Tim were too busy enjoying basking in Deverenko's reflected glory to remark on her listlessness. Clare did recall Deverenko giving her an odd look or two during their unremembered conversation, but then his manner had also been overly polite. Perhaps—horrors—he had noticed her dozing while he had thrown his soul into what the next day's papers had called 'a brilliant, extrovert performance containing both passion and tenderness'. Perhaps her restless shifting of her aching bones in the semi-comfortable seat had impinged on his formidable concentration. Perhaps he now regarded her as more of an ignorant philistine than ever! One thing she did remember about their conversation—it hadn't touched on the reason for their clash the previous week. Her relief had been mixed with a faint contempt. Oh, he was kind enough to Tim—signing his programme and talking to him about the performance— but obviously his flare of interest had faded and he felt no need to make excuses for it. Well, that suited Clare just fine. He had barged into their lives, he could barge right back out again. The tickets were obviously just a sop to his conscience. One day, when Tim was a famous violinist, Clare would be able to throw it in his face: this is what you walked away from! Oh, heavens, what was she thinking? She must be sick!

  She was. Their stay in Auckland was extended another four days as Clare succumbed to a very bad bout of flu. On the fifth day Miles flew in on a direct flight from Dallas and took them back down to Moonlight in his new toy, a French-built Aerospatial Dauphin helicopter, which he flew himself.

  David Deverenko left New Zealand for London on the same day.

  CHAPTER THREE

  'Tim, are you still in here? It's such a lovely day, why don't you go outside and play for a while? You could take the dogs for a walk.'

  'I'm reading.' Tim didn't lift his eyes from his book. He was sprawled on the big, overstuffed couch in the empty lounge of the lodge, a book propped against the arm.

  'I would think that after a week of rain you'd be happy to get out in the sunshine for a while,' said Clare in exasperation. 'Why don't you go down to the lake and see if the boat's come in?'

  The arrival of autumn had increased Moonlight's isolation. The single, narrow gravelled access road through the bush frequently became impassable after rain, which meant the only way in or out of the small bay on the far side of Lake Romata was by boat… or helicopter. The trip from the main road was usually quicker by water, anyway, but the road was a winding, scenic route that made up for in beauty what it lacked in convenience.

  'We would have heard the motor, if it had,' said Tim, with the aggravating logic that grated on so many of his teachers. If they weren't accusing him of being inattentive, they were finding that his full attention could be even more of a strain. Tim read voraciously, and when he was interested in a subject the sky was the limit. At such times, when his knowledge and understanding threatened to outstrip his teachers', Clare could appreciate their resentment and frustration. Sometimes she felt more like the child than the mother. Right now, for example, she'd love to escape for an hour or so to stretch her legs. The structural renovations now completed, the interior decorators had moved in. The three guest suites in the main lodge were empty for the duration, but there were still four of the five guest chalets occupied, and Clare was in the midst of doing the annual accounts. Maths not being her strong point, it was a chore, even with the new computer that Miles had had installed.

  'What is it that's so inter
esting, anyway?' Clare ventured.

  'A biography of David Deverenko. Look, here's a picture of him with his first violin.'

  Clare looked and couldn't help but smile. It was anything but a flattering portrait. The young Deverenko looked as if he wanted to break the violin over the head of the photographer. The thick black hair was unruly, and the scowl on his face fierce as he glared at the camera. The violin tucked under his chin almost seemed to grow out of his body. Leave me alone, the glower seemed to say. Can't you see I'm busy? Just so did Tim look when someone tried to interrupt his practice. Clare's eyes flicked to the caption beneath the photograph. Five. Even at five there seemed to be an energy about the small boy that was too big for the confines of the small black and white photograph. She sympathised with his mother. The bear cub must have been hell to tame.

  She took the book from Tim and firmly closed it. It had been two months since their personal encounter with Tim's idol, whose poster now hung alongside that of a Stradivarius violin on his bedroom wall. There was no avoiding the man. If Tim wasn't talking about him or reading about him, he was listening to Deverenko recordings on the ghetto-blaster he had saved up for by walking Miles's dogs and helping Grace Cooper in the kitchen.

  'You've been reading all morning,' she said. 'It's time you did something else.'

  'Why?'

  'Because I say so.' She had found it useless to give him an answer he could reason with, if she wanted his rapid obedience. Tim was capable of procrastinating forever when he chose.

  'But I don't want to go outside.'

  'Fine. Then you can help me. I can't get a program to run on the computer. You can come and tell me what I'm doing wrong.'

  'Oh, Mum!' Tim's groan was contemptuous, but Clare could see that he was secretly pleased. Tim was fascinated by computers, but Clare had refused to even consider buying him one, instead putting him off by suggesting he save for one. Tim was such a solitary child already that she didn't want to give him any more excuses to retreat further into his private inner world. First he must learn to relate to people. However gifted he was, if he couldn't form stable relationships in later life he would be condemned to a loneliness that Clare couldn't bear to contemplate.

  Sure enough, Tim found the problem and ran the program for her, and as a reward Clare let him work on a program he was constructing for himself. She worked on spread sheets at her desk in the large, high-ceilinged office just off the main foyer of the lodge until lunch, which she and Tim ate in the kitchen along with Shari, the live-in maid, and her husband Kerry who acted as general handyman. Grace produced one of her superb game soups, grumbling all the while about the extra work providing meals and snacks for the painters involved. Those at the kitchen table exchanged grins. Grace wouldn't be Grace without a complaint on her lips. She had been cook at the lodge since it had been a private home, and was commonly acknowledged to be one of the best game chefs in Rotorua. She considered Moonlight her home, and looked on the paying guests as family. Since many of them were regulars, 'invited' by Miles—celebrities, politicians, minor royalty and heads of state to whom the tranquillity and unpretentious luxury of Moonlight were a welcome escape from the pressures of the limelight—Grace made it a point to know all their foibles, while at the same time resolutely ignoring them. It was a measure of. her culinary reputation, and her bad temper, that no one who stayed at Moonlight ever sent a dish back to the kitchen. Clare had seen more than one ruthless tycoon choke down a dish of tripe, or hide spinach in their napkins to dump in the bush later, rather than risk Grace's wrath. At sixty-four, she looked like everybody's kindly old grandmother, but those who had heard her bark agreed that it was only if you had a grandmother who was a Dobermann!

  It was a sore point with Grace that the chalets had self-contained kitchens so that guests who wanted complete privacy didn't have to eat in the dining-room at the lodge, but rare was the visitor who, having once sampled Grace's delights, settled for doing their own cooking. The fact that they had two such rarities in residence at the moment had really given Grace something to get her teeth into. George Taverner was a prolific but reclusive writer of action-adventure stories, and whenever he was in danger of not meeting a deadline he holed up at Moonlight, living mainly on whisky, cigarettes and sheer nerves until the book was finished. Clare had seen so little of him, even though he had stayed at Moonlight on and off for about six months during her time there, that she doubted she would even recognise him.

  Their other rarity was a famous television face who had slipped discreetly into the country for a break from a gruelling Hollywood work schedule. He, too, was largely an unseen presence, but for a very different reason: a reason that was tall, red-headed, and built like a male fantasy. 'I'll bet that floosie never boiled an egg in her life,' Grace had growled, 'Did you see the order they sent in? Cans! They're over there eating out of cans! And they won't even let Shari in to tidy up.'

  'Perhaps they're on a secret honeymoon,' said Kerry, straight-faced.

  'Like last year, you mean?' his wife had grinned. 'When he was here with the brunette?'

  Clare imagined what a field day a gossip columnist could have, eavesdropping on a conversation in the Moonlight kitchen, but it was in the nature of the place that no one had ever broken the trust that the guests placed in their exclusive hideaway. Because the staff was so small, it was necessarily close-knit.

  Tim finally succumbed to persuasion after lunch, and went out for a walk with a long-suffering look at his mother that was very adult: he was only doing this for her sake. For her sake he might even try to enjoy it. Probably he would come across some animal or insect or fern, and spend the whole time studying it closely, ignoring the frisking of three boisterous dogs.

  Clare was arranging flowers in the lounge when she heard the helicopter, and a few minutes later she went out to greet Miles, returning after flying an English industrialist and his wife back to Auckland after a two-week stay.

  'Miss me?' He grinned at her as he strode up the stone steps and filled the foyer with his booming voice.

  'I hardly had time to,' she said drily. 'You seem to flit about like a butterfly these days, never here long enough to do any work and never away long enough for us to get any peace and quiet.'

  Miles laughed. He was a big man, as boisterous as his dogs, who thrived on his peripatetic life-style. A keen hunter, he prided himself on his fitness and looked a good deal younger than his fifty years.

  'You're too young for peace and quiet, Clare. That's why I've brought you some more guests. First-timers.' He rubbed his hands.

  'I thought we'd agreed to delay any more bookings until after the kitchen was finished,' said Clare. 'Couldn't you have put them off for another week?'

  'Don't you worry about Grade. This guy's a gourmet. Wait till you see who it is.'

  His enthusiasm was like that of a small boy. Clare had to admit that Miles was a genius at 'picking up' guests… creaming them from the Regent or ringing his mates at the Beehive whenever a state visit was touted. The lodge never advertised; it never had to. Miles's roaming around the globe and his many business interests generated word of mouth recommendations that ensured exclusivity. And naturally all guests had to pass the Parrish test of suitability—i.e. Miles had to like them; mere fame and money didn't provide an entree.

  'OK, but they'll have to take chalet five and it doesn't have any heating yet.' Their heat came from a thermal bore, and the renovations had necessitated relaying some of the pipes.

  'There's only two of them; let them have my suite. I'm off to Wellington in a couple of days, and I'll be gone a week. One of the new suites will be ready by then, won't it? What are the bookings like?'

  'How long do these new friends of yours want to stay? We're full up from the end of the month.'

  Miles shrugged rather sheepishly. 'I don't know… a week or so, I suppose, I forgot to ask. I was so keen for him to come…'

  It must be someone impressive… either that, or someone who shared his obsessi
on with hunting and fishing. Miles was usually blasé about his guests. Clare shook her head. 'Sometimes, Miles, I wonder how on earth you managed before I came along.'

  'So do I,' agreed Miles, although they both knew that one of the secrets of his success was his talent for delegation. He draped a casual arm across her shoulders, hugging her against him as he drew her towards the door to greet the guests who were following a suitcase-laden Kerry up the steps. 'You won't ever leave me, will you, honey? Hell, I'll even make an honest woman of you if you really twist my arm…' He trailed off suggestively, and Clare pinkened at the compliment rather than the implication that their relationship was in any way dishonest. Miles was the quintessential bachelor; his affection for women, all women, as expansive as his manner. The idea of his settling down was so ludicrous that he expected everyone to know that he was joking to even hint at it. If the new guests had got the wrong impression, they would soon be disabused—

  Clare stopped short, riveted by the sight of the man at the top of the steps.

  'Well, I guess you two don't need any introduction,' said Miles, looking smugly from one to the other.

  'No, indeed,' murmured David Deverenko blandly. 'Hello again, Clare.'

  'What are you doing here?' asked Clare faintly, aware of an embarrassing sense of déjà vu as she eased herself from Miles's friendly embrace.

  'Isn't it great? Don't you love my surprise?' Miles demanded. 'I called in on Virginia with your messages, and she told me Davey here was in town and looking for somewhere to relax for a while before he cranks up for his next tour…'

  Davey? Clare felt a small shock of betrayal. Was the man everybody's friend—except hers? She looked at him accusingly, and he gave a helpless shrug, as if to ask, 'Can I help it if I'm irresistible?' Yes. It had been two months… she had thought she was safe.