Love Thy Neighbour

by Victoria Gordon

  And when she got home, finally, it got worse.

  ‘They’ve demanded a delay in settlement!’ Her landlord’s voice was strangling with anger and disbelief, and despite the fact it must have been hours since he’d had that decision, he sounded to Fiona as if he still couldn’t believe it.

  Worse, he sounded more and more as if he was convinced the whole problem was her fault, and nobody else’s! She didn’t know what to say, and for several minutes could only hang on to the telephone and listen to his ranting and raving.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ she said finally, ‘but there’s just nothing I can do. I’m sure I locked up properly, I’ve told the police everything I know about this, and your raging at me isn’t going to accomplish anything.’

  She might as well not have spoken; he just kept on with his tirade. Fiona finally settled it by saying she had to go, and hanging up on him. The fact that she had to do it three times running was far from encouraging.

  Nor was the television news team, which she’d asked to keep an eye on the story for her. For them, it wasn’t much of a story in any event, and with no police leads and no new information they were no help at all.

  As things had worked out, she hadn’t been able to find time to personally inspect the damage to the warehouse, but between the police report and the little bit of work done by the various news services she had all too clear an idea of how bad things were. As the constable had told her, except for the mysterious aspect of the undamaged entry door, it appeared no more than typical juvenile vandalism. Fiona had pondered the situation to death throughout the day, but was no wiser.

  And by this time, it was too late to fulfil her promise to go and look at Dare Fraser’s shearing shed; Fiona didn’t fancy trying to inspect the place in the dark, and she tried not to think about the real reason for her wish to avoid his property.

  It was possible, she thought for a moment, that she could get to the shearing shed and have her inspection without any risk of running into Consuela Diaz. But it was equally possible she might, and Fiona simply couldn’t face that on top of the day she’d already endured.

  ‘It can wait,’ she told the dogs as they slept round her feet. ‘We’ll do that last class here at the weekend and maybe then we’ll check out the alternatives.’ A firm decision at last, she thought, but it did little to ease her worries. She slept no better than the night before, and faced the next day feeling as if she hadn’t slept properly for a week. Her work day was horrible, and arriving home to find Dare waiting only added to her sense of frustration.

  ‘1 thought this might be getting a bit much for you,’ he said without bothering to greet her — or notice that she didn’t have any cheery hello of her own. ‘You looked bloody awful on air last night, because of the vandalism, I presume, and tonight was damned little improvement.’

  ‘Well, thank you so much,’ Fiona replied tartly. ‘You’re just full of compliments, aren’t you? Now if that’s all you’ve got to contribute, perhaps you’d like to...’

  She paused then, wide-eyed at the thought of how close she’d just come to telling him where, and how, to disappear.

  She needn’t have worried; he only laughed at her discomfiture, although she felt certain he knew exactly the rude phrase that had filled her mouth.

  ‘You really are copping it in big doses, aren’t you?’ he chuckled. ‘OK, 1 apologise, but it did worry me to see you so ... well, so obviously upset by it all.’

  Fiona hardly knew how to reply. She had been worried too, sufficiently that she’d checked back through the tapes after both her weather forecasts, but she had seen no sign of her being upset. The magic of make-up had covered almost all signs of strain, and her presentation had been, to her own usually objective eye, quite normal and professional.

  He might have been reading her mind. ‘Hey, don’t go all strange about it,’ he suddenly said. ‘I noticed, but I doubt if anybody else did. And after all, I was aware of the hassles and I was probably looking for signs of stress. It wasn’t all that obvious!’

  Typical bloody man, she thought. He thought she was concerned with how her audience had seen her, when her real concern was the simple fact that he, Dare Fraser, had been able to read her mood so well.

  ‘Of course; I’d forgotten you were involved with that warehouse project,’ she lied. ‘It must have come as quite a shock to you, having so much damage that the deal might have fallen through because of it.’

  Dare’s face reflected his surprise, at her remark. ‘I would have thought most of it was totally irrelevant,’ he said with a frown. ‘We would have had to rip the guts out of the building anyway, and a few windows are hardly any great expense to replace.’

  ‘That’s hardly the point, as far as I’m concerned,’ Fiona replied bitterly, then abruptly shut up; it was none of his business, after all.

  But Dare was not to be forestalled. ‘That’s what bothers me,’ he said abruptly. ‘Why should you be so damned concerned about an act of vandalism that had nothing to do with you? Or is there something involved here that you know about and I don’t?’

  ‘Nothing that concerns you,’ she replied, turning away rudely. ‘So if you don’t mind—’

  ‘But I do mind. I know very well you had nothing to do with the vandalism; I was here with you, remember? And I’m sure you’re thinking it’s all none of my business, but that isn’t the point either, because you’re upset.’

  ‘Well, of course I’m upset! Everybody seems convinced that I forgot to lock up properly, and half of them seem to think it must have been deliberate. Wouldn’t you be upset?’

  ‘Not if it wasn’t true,’ he replied, then as quickly changed his mind. ‘No, forget that; yes, I would, and I can certainly see why you are. But surely you know it isn’t true and surely you’ve told “everybody” that?’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ she snapped. ‘Because I don’t know it isn’t true. Oh, I know I didn’t do it deliberately, of course, but I just can’t remember locking the door at all.’

  Fraser stood in silence for a moment, his eyes locked on to hers, the expression of compassion too obvious to mistake. He shook his head, his wide, mobile mouth twisted into a grimace of distaste, and he shook his head again before he finally spoke.

  ‘That’d be right,’ he muttered. ‘And you being you, the result is a mammoth guilt trip, all meals and airport transfers included.’

  Fiona had looked away, but now she was forced to meet his eyes, and even then wasn’t certain if he was being critical or sympathetic or both. Then she looked away again; this wasn’t accomplishing anything. Right as he might be about the guilt trip, she didn’t really want to dissect her feelings. All she really wanted was to be alone so she could wallow in the guilt and somehow sort it out.

  Her idea! But obviously not Dare Fraser’s. He turned away and went over to let her dogs out of the kennel.

  ‘You want me to go away, and maybe I should,’ he said. ‘But I’m not going to, not yet. You need something to take your mind off this crap, so we’re going to give this mob a run before tea, and then ... well, then we’ll see.’

  Fiona’s objections were lost in the exuberance of her dogs’ welcome, and before she could repeat them Dare had taken her arm and was leading her towards the back paddock, all three dogs forging excitedly ahead.

  He kept holding her arm until he was apparently sure she was with them; then he released her and began throwing the dogs’ retrieving dummies, laughing at the resultant chaos as all three animals scrambled to be first in the contests.

  Fiona found it impossible to be angry with them, and after a few minutes she joined in the activity, and then put Dare to specific tasks, hiding him behind shrubbery to throw doubles and blinds and other specialised retrieves.

  By the time the dogs were thoroughly worn out and Dare had declared his throwing arm equally so, Fiona’s mood was back much closer to normal and she was able to smile and declare him a ‘fit and proper’ helper.

  ‘Hardly a descripti
on I’d have chosen, but all right,’ he said, returning her smile. ‘Now let’s get this lot back for their tea, and then we can discuss the complications involved in getting us fed.’

  Fiona shot him a curious glance, then abruptly decided against her instinctive reaction, which was to refuse. She had to admit he’d been right so far; she felt much better.

  Once back at the house. Dare sat silently at the kitchen table while Fiona fed the ravenous dogs, then made him a cup of coffee while she took time to shower and change.

  He’d declined to be specific about his plans for the rest of the evening, even when she’d insisted it might be nice to know how to dress appropriately.

  ‘Just be comfortable,’ he’d said. So she’d started to slip into worn jeans and an old but comfortable sweatshirt, only to have second thoughts.

  ‘This is stupid,’ she told her reflection in the mirror, but that reflection, now garbed in a casual but tidy blouse and bright-patterned wrap-around skirt, presented a far more appropriate image, Fiona had to agree, than just comfortable.

  When she returned to the kitchen, it was obvious from his carefully assessing gaze that Dare also agreed. He didn’t go so far as to whistle, but the look in his eye was enough to start a faint flutter in Fiona’s pulse.

  She put the dogs away, then joined him in his utility vehicle as they drove the short distance to his homestead. ‘We’ll give the shearing shed a quick check,’ he’d said, and she could hardly disagree under the circumstances. ‘And then — with no decisions or anything, you understand — I’ll make you the beneficiary, if that’s the appropriate word, of my own culinary skills.’

  ‘I can hardly wait,’ she replied honestly. ‘All that exercise has made me as ravenous as my dogs.’

  ‘Which may be just as well,’ was the smiling reply. ‘I’ve just finished a little gadget I want to try, but if it doesn’t work properly we may have to resort to making a rum-run to the nearest pub.’

  It took only a cursory inspection for Fiona to realise that the shearing shed, while not perfect, would be more than adequate for her classes. It was, if anything, too big, and would be chilly on winter nights, but the non- slip floor was a godsend and the lighting was great.

  ‘I can’t find any fault,’ she said after a few minutes, only to have Dare press his finger over her lips while using his other hand to emphasise the gesture.

  ‘No discussion; no decisions,’ he said firmly. ‘Or at least, not now. Now we go try out my super-duper new barbecue gismo and see if it’s going to make my fortune.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Fiona replied with a smile. ‘And I warn you it had better work, because if I don’t get something into me pretty soon I think I’ll faint from hunger.’

  ‘When you see this little invention, you may faint anyway,’ Dare replied, and casually took her arm as they walked to the big house.

  There, Fiona refused even a sherry before dinner, knowing she didn’t dare put alcohol on a stomach as empty as hers. Dare poured himself a beer, and sat her at the kitchen table while he prepared two huge steaks for cooking and gathered the various ingredients for a salad.

  Fiona was allowed only to watch.

  ‘I might make you help with the washing up,’ Dare said. ‘But only if this goes as planned.’

  Once the steaks were ready, he led her into an elegantly fitted lounge-room, a huge space with fittings to match. The furniture was heavy, solid. The high ceilings were typical of the period and the walls were complete with picture rails, and the rails with pictures.

  Clearly this was the centre-point of the family home, the hub around which the entire structure had been planned. Fiona couldn’t help but be impressed, although she did wonder how Dare could live here all alone.

  ‘I rattle around like a peanut in a shell, if you’re thinking what I expect you are,’ he remarked astutely. ‘And it gets worse. There are rooms I haven’t even set foot in since I came back; the place is a veritable rabbit warren.’

  ‘It certainly looks impressive,’ was all she could think of to say. No lie, but in reality the enormous house looked like most rural homes of its era, like a sandstone blockhouse from the outside and, well, she hadn’t seen that much of the interior. The kitchen, if nothing else, had been modernised quite comfortably while retaining the proper character.

  ‘It’s a barn of a place, and absolutely no place for a man alone,’ was the irreverent reply. ‘I don’t expect it’s been a proper family home since my grandfather’s day; I was an only child, and this place needs a dozen of them to fill it up.’

  Seating Fiona in an enormous but marvellously comfortable sofa, and placing his tray of meat and condiments on a handy coffee-table. Dare left the room and returned a moment later trundling what Fiona could only verbalise as a mad scientist’s tea-trolley.

  It was an amazing conglomeration of wheels and chains and gears and cogs, but the essential framework appeared to be that of a serving trolley, complete with castors.

  She watched with growing perplexity as Dare trundled the contraption over to the room’s main fireplace and manoeuvred it into place, spanning the still-glowing coals of a fire that must have been lit hours before.

  Then he fiddled with the chains and tinkered with other bits and pieces before adding a few small branches to the fire so that it flared directly under the lowest shelf.

  ‘Right! Five minutes and we’ll be watching the most versatile barbecue known to man,’ he said with a broad, almost boyish grin.

  Fiona, who couldn’t for the life of her figure out just how the contraption was supposed to work, could none the less see that it was not the brand-new invention he’d originally claimed, and she couldn’t resist saying so.

  He wasn’t even decently ashamed, but laughed as he admitted the lie. ‘Caught, and I should have expected it,’ he chuckled. ‘No, of course it’s not new. It’s ... hell, it’s damned near as old as you are! I designed it when I was about twelve, so that’d be right.’

  Her face must have revealed her surprise, because he laughed again and couldn’t resist going into a lengthy explanation, most of which she couldn’t understand. What was clear, however, was the boyish pleasure that still lived in his entire attitude towards what must have been a complex design project for a twelve-year-old.

  And as he described the problems and the various approaches he’d tried, along with various improvements and additions made over the years, she could almost see in his face the boy he must have been: serious, determined, very insular as might be expected in an only child in the country, and extremely innovative and intelligent.

  ‘I was going to patent it, once,’ he revealed. ‘But in those days every fireplace was so different and the detail work would have made the thing totally uneconomical. Nowadays ... well, it might be possible to come up with a commercial model; most modern open fireplaces are much of a size,’

  A moment later, he demonstrated the practicalities of his youthful invention, placing two-inch-thick steaks on the sizzling plate and declaring they’d be cooked no further than medium-rare.

  When the meat was placed with salad in front of her, it looked more like a small roast than anything else, but Fiona’s appetite wasn’t confused. She and Dare sat across from each other, eating in silence as both did justice to the simple but satisfying meal.

  Afterwards, it was all too easy to succumb to the warmth of the fire and the combined effects of the earlier exercise and the fullness of the meal. Dare made coffee, served it with tiny glasses of excellent port, and they both sat staring into the flames, together and yet apart, each lost in thoughts neither shared nor needing to be.

  Fiona wouldn’t have dared to communicate her thoughts; she was surreptitiously watching her host, discovering the various planes and angles of his rugged, handsome features, the changes of expression created by each alteration in the flickering light of the fire.

  How difficult it must be, she thought, to rattle round a family home as palatial as this, a home which must be filled with
memories, alive with a history now truly significant only to this one man. What a legacy for the children he would eventually have, so much to share, to teach...

  The far-off sound of a howling dog failed to free her from her reverie, but when it was repeated and Dare Fraser leapt suddenly to his feet, she too was quickly roused.

  Fiona followed as he strode to the front door, his every stride alive with a strange, tense alertness. Together, they stepped out into the star-speckled darkness, listening — but for what?

  Fiona found out all too quickly. The night silence was suddenly rent with a howling, and now it wasn’t one dog, but several. And mingled with the horrific sound, a bleating of terrorised, panic-stricken sheep.

  ‘Damn!’ Dare’s voice spat out the curse even as he spun round and reached into the shadowy hallway behind him, turning back to the night with a rifle in one hand and his keys in the other.

  ‘You stay here,’ he growled, and was running for his utility vehicle before she could reply.

  ‘Not on your life,’ she cried, and was opening the passenger door even as the engine screamed to life and the headlights threw cones of visibility across the yard.

  ‘You won’t like this,’ he warned, pausing for the instant it took to throw open the kennel where Blue bounced with excitement. The utility vehicle was in motion even as the sheepdog flew into the open tray.

  Fiona was forced to hang on for dear life as they sped through one open gate, then across the open paddocks on a route that ignored existing tracks. Dare reached under the dash, driving one-handed despite the apparent dangers of the terrain, and handed Fiona a spotlight.

  ‘Can you work this while I drive?* he asked without looking at her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ve never done this before.’

  ‘Just stick your arm out of the window and try to cover as much ground as you can,’ he muttered. ‘And if you see a dog, try and keep the light on him, that’s all.’

  Easier said than done, she found, especially with the vehicle bounding across the paddock like some demented thing.