Roz went out of the bedroom in a little huff; then, as the door closed behind her, she had second thoughts and pushed it open again to put her head around the jamb and say sternly, 'You keep this to yourself, sister mine, or I'll pull your hair and drown your baby. No telling Stephen, not even a little murmur in the confines of your marital couch!'
Eve raised her head and across the room her eyes twinkled at her sister. 'That sounds much better.' She gave a youthful giggle. 'You're ashamed of yourself, and that's always a good sign—or do I mean a bad one? Hey! Don't go off empty-handed, take these nappies with you.'
Roz cleared away the clutter and then went along to her own room where she seated herself at the little desk in the window embrasure and read her letter.
It was from her editor, it was brief and concise and very flattering. Apparently the magazine intended to give her a spread the month before her articles began. Roz was to be a real person and not just a face; she was to be shown at home, in the bosom of her family, therefore more photographs would be required, homey-type things. Roz Wilshire at her desk, answering reader's letters: Roz arranging flowers; Roz reading a book; Roz playing with the younger members of her family. At this point, her brows drew together in a bad-tempered scowl. And Mr Charles Maine knew all about it! He would make all the arrangements with her to take the required photographs! Roz went in search of him to scold.
'Why didn't you tell me?' she demanded crossly. 'Roz Wilshire at home!' She snorted down her small, straight nose. 'This isn't my home, it's my sister's, and it's quite possible that either she or Stephen will object to having their privacy invaded.'
Charles looked at her with dark, enigmatic eyes. 'Your brother-in-law object to a little publicity?' He made it sound like the eighth wonder of the world. 'I thought he thrived on it! You can tell him that he won't be in the pictures, if that makes any difference. They'll be you, with perhaps your sister in the background, all very cosy and conforming to the very best standards of domestic felicity.'
'Stephen will have to be consulted,' she grunted with displeasure. 'He could very well object…'
'…especially since he won't be in the photographs…'
'…And it could cause a bit of bother.' She glared at him.
'Then count me out,' Charles smiled bitterly. 'Family quarrels were never my forte.'
'Oh!' Roz looked and sounded surprised. 'Didn't your family ever quarrel?'
'No family.' He was curt and his face was now shuttered and withdrawn.
'You were an only child?' Interest stirred within her as she imagined him playing his solitary games; a small, thin, dark little boy, lonely and dreadfully alone.
He shrugged. 'I don't know. I grew up in an orphanage—and don't ask me if my parents were dead, because I don't know that either.' Perhaps he would have continued, but at that moment the front door slammed and Stephen strode into the kitchen. Roz smothered a swear-word—damn Stephen! He could always be counted on to put in an appearance just when he wasn't wanted and when it would be least appreciated. She had just begun to start knowing about Charles; he had started to open the door and now—she looked at his face—he had clammed up again!
Stephen exuded bonhomie. 'Can you spare me some time this morning, Roz? I've a free day and I've brought the notes for my lecture tour. I'd like you to go over them for me.' He turned to Charles, who was looking enigmatic again. 'You'll be able to amuse yourself this morning, won't you, old man?'
'Hardly.' Charles was not going to be co-operative. 'I need some extra equipment which means a trip up to London and I need Roz with me. Sorry, old man!' His mimicry was bitterly accurate. 'Are you ready, Roz? Because if not, you'd better step lively, we haven't a lot of time.' His hand was about her arm, pushing her in the direction of the door. 'Some other time, old man!' he threw the words over his shoulder.
'Very high-handed, if I may say so.' Roz, in a thin black suit with a primrose yellow blouse, installed herself in the front seat of the Cadillac and sat contemplating her shoes; high-heeled black patent courts which made her legs look longer and her feet more slender. 'Rushing me off like that! I was just going to talk Stephen into a good mood.'
'His moods don't concern me.' Charles slid behind the wheel and switched on the ignition. 'We can manage very well without his permission. I thought the house belonged to you and your sister.' He spared her a glance as he negotiated the curve of the drive. 'Eve told me that you were both born there and that she'd never lived anywhere else.'
'True,' Roz nodded. 'But I don't like the house very much. I suppose it's because I've been away from it for so many years. When I came back to it, I looked at it with new eyes. It's one of those pretentious, mock Gothic, Edwardian things and situated as it is on the outskirts of a village which looks as though it's been there for ever, it sticks out like a sore thumb. All that red brick! Perhaps, if it was suddenly transported to St John's Wood or Hampstead, it would be tolerable, but it's out of place in Sussex. Eve likes it though and I told her years ago that she was welcome to my share.'
'It's a good place to bring up a family.' Charles was thoughtful.
'And that lets me out,' Roz smiled sweetly at him. 'Eve can bring up her family in it, but me, I don't have this maternal instinct.'
Charles nodded, his eyes never leaving the road. 'I'm glad to hear it. I'd like to establish a good relationship with my wife before we go into the Happy Families act. I want to know all there is to know about you and I'd like you to get to know me properly; it would take time and we'd do it more easily if there were no children to cope with while we were learning. There'll be plenty of time to start a family later, so would you object to four or five years without the patter of tiny feet?'
'If and when I marry—' Roz was being deliberately awkward and she knew it, but, to her way of thinking, Charles was taking too much for granted. She pursed her mouth as though she was giving the matter a great deal of heavy thought. 'I think I'd prefer to start a family straight away. There's the matter of my age; I'm twenty-five, going on twenty-six, and I don't think I could afford to wait until I'm past thirty. Mothers should be reasonably young, I think.' She slid him a sideways glance to see how he was taking it and was disappointed to see that he was quite unmoved. 'Anyway,' she continued with relish, 'I'm sure that's a thing which concerns only my husband and myself, so there's no need for you to worry your head about it.'
'But I'm going to be that husband, you can make up your mind to it!'
'My, my,' she jeered at him. 'Until yesterday, the thought of anything as permanent as marriage had never entered your mind, and now it's bedded in firmly. It takes two to make that sort of bargain, perhaps you'd better remember that!' And she sank back in her seat with her eyes closed and remained uncommunicative for the rest of the journey. In the silence, she thought of a great many other things which she would say as soon as the opportunity arose and made a mental note of them in case she forgot.
It was nearly lunch time when Charles pulled up outside his house, and Roz found herself being surprised that it looked no different from when she had seen it last. The white paint still gleamed, the knocker shone in the sunshine and the two hanging baskets of flowers, one on either side of the door, had not wilted with neglect. Then she remembered that it was only—how long?—four days since she had been here last. It seemed more like an age!
'See to some lunch,' Charles directed as he pushed her in through the door. 'You'll find everything necessary in the kitchen.' And he headed for the stairs which led up to the studio.
There was no sign of the secretary, so Roz supposed the woman was also on holiday, and as she raked chops out of the freezer and delved among the neat packages of vegetables she tried to recall what that secretary had looked like. It wasn't easy. Since the first morning five years ago, when she had come here for the first time, she had never really looked at the woman. After that, it had been just a wave of the hand as she passed through the lobby on the way up to the studio. She carried in her mind a memory of a wom
an, older than herself; always smartly dressed in businesslike clothes; blonde; well groomed, and that was all! The face—Roz smiled ruefully to herself; after that first time, she had never looked at it, and that first time she had been far too nervous for the face to make any impression. Margery Smith, she remembered that!
Of course, if she did marry Charles, the secretary would have to go! She, Roz, wasn't sharing! But the possibility was so remote that it could be discounted. Charles might turn her on, but he was a long way from her ideal when it came to choosing a husband, and what was more, turn on or not, she wasn't in love with him.
She remembered, with some embarrassment, her first love, Stephen, and how it had been then. 'A sickness of the mind', that was what the poet had said, but it hadn't been just her mind, not unless the mind controlled the body. She remembered the sick feeling in her stomach when she didn't have any lectures with him for two days, the hot embarrassment when he spoke to her and her tonguetied answers; they had come stumbling off her tongue, unreasoned because his sea-blue eyes were looking at her.
No, it wasn't like that with Charles! Charles got under her skin and irritated her. For instance, here he was doing a King Cophetua act; he would marry her! He would be doing her a favour, that was what he made it sound like! Well, he could take his favours and donate them to some other worthy cause, she didn't need them. And she slammed the chops into the baking dish with some considerable force.
From the studio came the sounds of Charles; and he sounded as though he was turning out cupboards. There was the chink of metal, the pad-pad of his footsteps going back and forth across the floor, the opening and shutting of cupboard doors and drawers. Then he was on the stairs and Roz came out of the kitchen to see what was going on.
Already he had accumulated quite a pile of stuff in the small hallway; there was the big leather case which contained within its sponge rubber and velvet interior his treasured Hasselblad together with its extra lenses and filters. As she watched, he deposited a big tripod and a pile of chromium-plated tubes which, when assembled, would make the frame on which he supported the spot lights.
'Oh, very professional,' she called as he turned to remount the stairs. 'It's always a marvel to me that other photographers can manage with a hand-held, 35-millimetre, single-lens reflex.'
At the top of the stairs, he turned to look down at her. 'But they don't make you look as beautiful as I do, darling, and they use ten times as much film. Stand still a moment.' He came down three steps and looked down at her intently. 'Yes, that's a good angle for your face, a bit foreshortened from the height, but you can get away with it.'
Roz went back to the kitchen and took out her bad humour on the plastic wrappings which shrouded the frozen peas and chips; tearing at them with angry fingers and letting the lid of the waste bin fall with a clatter after she had disposed of the rubbish. Charles came down the stairs again, and this time it must be his last trip with his last load, because he dumped more chinking stuff in the hall and came into the kitchen.
'Lunch ready?' he enquired, and came to stand beside her to check her preparations. Roz yawned in his face.
'Such as it is,' she murmured, taking the chops out of the microwave oven and putting them under the grill to brown off. 'You can set the table any time you like.'
When they had eaten and were sitting in the lounge, drinking coffee, Charles leaned back in his chair and surveyed her where she had tucked herself up comfortably on the divan. 'The meal was competent, but it lacked artistry,' he observed. 'Your sister neglected your education in domestic matters—a clear case of developing brain power at the expense of visual pleasure. Or don't you care how things look; except your own personal appearance, of course?'
Roz flushed but retained her cool. Eve had not neglected her education as far as kitchen chores went. If she put her mind to it, she could turn out a well planned, well balanced lunch or dinner with all the trimmings; a meal which looked as good as it tasted, although she made no pretensions to any particular ability. Today, she had been so bad-tempered that she hadn't bothered except to dunk a knob of butter on the peas.
She did her best to ignore the remark, to be silent while she drank her coffee and brooded on the injustices of life, but once again Charles had got under her skin to irritate her, to increase her feeling that she was being got at.
'I've been looking after my sister and her family for three months,' she told him icily, although the irritation showed through the ice, making her voice tart. 'Did you notice any signs of neglect or malnutrition?'
'A labour of love?' He smiled sarcastically over the rim of his coffee mug. 'Do I take it that today's little effort was only labour, that there was no love involved?'
Roz banged her own mug down on the tray, remembering her own first love and being upset by the thought of it. 'Love! What's that? And what has it to do with you and me? It's an emotion you don't know a thing about and it's one I don't trust. I've seen this so-called love in operation; I went through it myself when I was nineteen and I've seen other girls I know going through it—it's a kind of trauma. It flares up and then it dies and there's nothing left, not even the ashes of a memory to mourn over.'
'Your sister knows about it—'
'…That's what I mean,' she interrupted savagely. 'But we'll leave Eve out of it, if you please. She's perfectly happy because she's either as blind as a bat or she's trained herself not to see things, and I'm going to see that she stays that way. Well,' she slid off the divan and straightened her skirt, 'shall we go now? I'd like to be back in time for dinner.'
'Can't I tempt you to another sample?' Charles's smile glimmered across the room. 'I have several, I assure you, and each one is guaranteed to raise your blood pressure.'
'No, thank you.' She turned her attention to her appearance and picked a thread from the lapel of her jacket with finicky care. 'I've tried all the samples I need; I've assessed the quality of the goods on offer and I find them a trifle shoddy.'
'But not as shoddy as the line your brother-in-law is offering, surely?'
Roz sighed with exasperation. 'That has nothing to do with you,' she informed him, smiling a too sweet smile. 'So it would be better if you minded your own business. Shall we go?'
'As you wish.' He became compliant. 'You do the washing up while I load the stuff into the car,' and without waiting for a yea or nay he put his mug on the tray and went out.
An unreasonable disappointment filled her so that she carried the tray into the kitchen, ran hot water into the sink, squirted liquid in generously, even lavishly, and practically threw the dishes in after it. Having got her own way, she suddenly discovered that it was the last thing she wanted. She hadn't expected such an easy victory, she had actually been anticipating a fight, had been looking forward to it. Charles had asked her to marry him; no, that wasn't quite correct, he had told her that she was going to marry him. Not that there was much difference, the proposal had been made, and now he had offered a little lovemaking. She had refused and he had accepted the refusal without a murmur. He shouldn't have accepted her refusal so calmly, he should have shown some signs of fight, he should have…
Irritably, she scrubbed at obstinate sticky stuff on the plates and felt deprived! He was a mouse, not a man! He was an uninterested mouse!
'We'll find a place for dinner on the way back.' Charles was competently steering the car through the London traffic. He drove in the same way that he took photographs; economically, carefully and without fuss, the big car responding to his every touch. Roz looked at his hands, resting on the wheel, and had a sudden wild desire to touch them, to reach out and cover one of them with her own, but it was only a fleeting desire and easily overcome.
'I'm not dressed for dining out,' she pointed out reasonably. She was being difficult again and she almost wept for it. Why couldn't she have said 'that would be a lovely idea', or 'I know just the place'? She tried out the words in her mind and dismissed them, they made her sound weak-willed. So, to change the subje
ct, to get on to something safer, 'Whatever made you buy a car this size?' Her hand waved round the huge interior and indicated the length of the bonnet.
'I like it.' He slanted her an amused glance as though he knew what she was thinking. 'The suspension is superb and it's very easy to drive, especially on long journeys.'
'But it must drink petrol,' she protested. 'Surely something a little less overpowering would have been more sensible.'
'What's "sensible"? I happen to like it, it's comfortable and distinctive—'
'…And ostentatious…'she interrupted.
'And ostentatious,' he agreed with her. 'Where shall we eat? That place where we went before, or can you recommend another restaurant? You know the area, I don't.'
'I told you…'
'Yes, I know you did, but I don't take easily to telling, and, in any case, I told your sister before we left this morning that we wouldn't be back for dinner, so she won't be expecting us.'
Roz felt relief and a measure of pleasurable anticipation. He'd discarded his mouselike attitude! 'There's a good place just outside Lewes.' She made it sound grudging. 'It'll mean a bit of a detour, we'll have to go down to Lewes and back again. It'll mean an extra ten or fifteen miles, but I suppose…'
'You suppose rightly,' and the car sped on, not too quickly in the afternoon sunshine.
The country pub where they stopped for dinner wasn't very crowded, it was a pleasant place, so old that it was ageless, and it breathed a slumbering content from every brick and piece of timber. Tales were told about it—that it had once been the haunt of a gang of smugglers and that in the cellars there were still a few bottles of brandy which had never paid duty to King George the Third. Early on in life, Roz had believed the stories—that had been in her romantic days—but now she dismissed them. They were probably put about and fostered by the landlord for the sake of custom.
Tame a Proud Heart Page 6
