'Marry…?' Catriona sensed the situation getting out of hand. 'Who said anything about getting married?—you're presuming far too much, Aunt Hanna.'
'Not at all.' Her aunt's chin jutted. 'I'm well aware that some modern-minded misses are prepared to settle for less, but don't you be tempted, Catriona, play your fish by all means, tempt him with tasty bait, but keep him dangling on the hook until he's well and truly landed!'
'Aunt Hanna, I'm shocked!' Catriona gurgled, amazement giving way to amusement. 'I never imagined the day would dawn when I'd hear you advocating setting bait for humans!'
To her dismay, instead of responding in a jocular vein her aunt suddenly seemed to crumple, her happy twinkle fading until her eyes appeared glazed.
'Is it so wrong of me to want to see you married before I die, child?'
Catriona froze, alarmed by a sigh laden heavily with the acceptance of old age.
'I've never been lonely,' her aunt continued sadly. 'Solitude has always been my home and I've been content that it should be so, yet having said that, I must admit that when I was younger I felt occasional regret at having been denied the sense of fulfilment that only a husband and children can bring.' Abruptly, she jerked forward in her chair to emphasise, 'That is what I want for you, Kate dear…' Only during rare emotional moments did she revert to the diminutive she had often used to call Catriona in from play; to greet her arrival home from school. '… I feel weary, ready to relinquish my bonds, but not until I've seen you settled can I ever contemplate preparing to meet my Maker.'
With a cry of distress Catriona slid to her knees by the old lady's chair. 'Aunt Hanna, you're not to talk like that, I won't listen to you!' she choked, appalled by the realisation that her aunt's fierce pride in her ability to work, to converse intelligently, to read without the aid of spectacles or to labour lovingly over the fine lace shawls that grew beneath her nimble fingers from a few single stitches into an intricate web large enough to spread across her lap, fine enough to be drawn through a wedding ring-had faded with her agility, leaving her prey to the temptation to live in the past, to dismiss all personal plans for the future. Every vestige of the guilt she had felt was dispersed from her conscience as, fiercely glad that she had lied, she seized upon the deception as a form of shock therapy.
Forcing herself to rise casually to her feet, she swept a critical eye around the tiny living-room. 'I hadn't noticed until this minute,' she censured, 'how shabby the house has become. A coat of distemper, wouldn't come amiss and a lick of paint would make a vast improvement.'
As she had hoped, her remarks raised the old lady's interest as well as her blood pressure.
Daring to push her luck, she continued, tongue-in-cheek. 'As you seem eager to meet my friend no doubt you'll soon be inviting him to dinner, but before you do, oughtn't we to try to get the house looking a little more respectable?'
'Respectable!' Her aunt bridled to her feet seething with injured pride. 'Since when has my house not been considered respectable enough for visitors? I'll have you know, my girl, that these walls are distempered at least twice a year, and as for the paintwork, it was last done… er…'
'Yes, aunt?' she prompted, outwardly severe, but inwardly rejoicing. Knowing that her aunt, in common with most Shetlanders, possessed a deep vein of honesty, she was not surprised to see her colour rise before she admitted lamely,
'Well, perhaps I have been a little remiss in that respect.'
'In that case,' Catriona decided, carefully hiding her satisfaction, 'I'll telephone Lerwick tomorrow and ask the paint shop to deliver all the items we're likely to need.'
After a satisfying meal of vegetable broth followed by Finnan haddock salted fish made easily recognisable by two 'fingerprints of Saint Peter' either side of its head, split, cleaned and salted, then slowly cured over smoking oak chips to a silver, tawny colour they spent an hour deciding upon a new colour scheme, then retired early to bed, one to drift into sleep the moment her grey head touched the pillow, the other to lie awake for hours staring at the ceiling, wondering how best to cope, determined now more than ever to resort to any tactics, however questionable, in order to thwart the intention of the powerful oil boss who, in spite of his sudden capitulation, she suspected was still determined to be rid of her.
Mist was hanging low as her spirits, obliterating all familiar landmarks, when the chauffeur arrived an hour late at the cottage the following morning.
'If I'd known how rapidly visibility would diminish I wouldn't have set out at all,' he replied to Catriona's anxious enquiry about the time as they set off on the return journey. 'I know you've been told to report to the bosses office at eight-thirty, but I'm afraid you'll have to resign yourself to being at least a couple of hours late.'
'Why not let me drive?' she offered hastily. 'I've travelled this road so often on foot and by bicycle I'd know the way blindfolded.'
The driver's brow cleared. 'Well, if you're certain you don't mind, miss. Passengers are usually forbidden to take over the driving of company vehicles, but as I'm a stranger to this part of the island and have no wish to land the car in a ditch, and injure us both, I'll chance being carpeted by the boss for breaking the rules. He's a stickler for discipline, as you've probably gathered, he lays down the rules and has made it perfectly plain that no second chance will be given to anyone who doesn't abide by them.'
'Don't worry,' she reassured him, sliding confidently behind the wheel, 'not even a despot could argue with the logic of allowing a driver to take over whose knowledge of the district is superior. I know every bend and curve of this road,' she insisted, peering through mist rolling like waves against the windscreen. 'Even in this pea-souper, I know I can find my way back to the base with the minimum of delay.'
'Then I'll do my best to act as radar equipment, miss,' the driver grinned, settling sheepishly into the passenger seat. 'I'll keep my eyes peeled and let you know immediately the car seems in danger of running off the road.'
Pleased to discover him amenable to reason, Catriona started up the engine and began inching the car forward, increasing speed whenever the mist lifted long enough to disclose a clear stretch of road ahead.
'This must be the only length of road the oil company hasn't yet got around to improving,' her passenger grumbled when the offside tyres rumbled into a rut, jerking them both sideways. 'You Shelties must have found it hard to believe your good fortune when Lion Oil Incorporated moved into the island, providing better roads, houses, schools and medical facilities, improving air and sea communications and, most important of all, making available jobs with sky-high wages that have enabled families to buy luxuries previously far beyond their reach. I've heard there's been a phenomenal increase in the number of freezers, caravans, television sets and washing machines being delivered to the island.'
'As well as miles of ugly pipelines, sludge green tanks, tons of cement and steel, and enough unsightly cable to stretch across to Europe and back,' she responded tartly, betraying her resentment of the despoiling of solitary heather-clad hills that had been gouged and flattened to make way for the sprawling oil terminal known to the locals as 'the light in the sky' because of the two million pounds' worth of flood lighting installed to enable men to work twelve hours a day right throughout the long Shetland winter when only six hours of murky daylight separated sunrise from sunset.
Perhaps it was the fact that he had been forced to hand over the wheel to a girl which was beginning to rankle, or maybe it was the depressing effect of thick grey mist, made all the more eerie by the mournful hoot of foghorns sounding a warning to tankers anchored offshore awaiting safe entry into the harbour, that made his response sound sour, hinting at her ingratitude.
'You natives are very hard to please! Even school-leavers can earn a couple of hundred pounds a week merely by sweeping out chalets and wiping down tables in bright modern surroundings designed to make workers feel less like prisoners condemned to a stretch of solitary confinement, y
et your attitude towards oilmen remains frigid, none of you make any secret of the fact that you would prefer us to clear off your island—even though full advantage has been taken of company jobs and money.'
Irritated by his attitude, and by a slow rate of progress which she suspected was about to provide her impatient boss with an opportunity to exercise his sarcastic tongue on the subject of personnel who courted unpunctuality and caused inconvenience by insisting upon living off-site, Catriona defended smartly,
'Contrary to your opinion that oil has been our salvation, we were doing very nicely, thank you, before the arrival of treasure-hunters in search of black gold—perhaps not wealthy by oil mens' standards, but our knitwear and fishing industries were thriving, and our shops were stocked with everything necessary to supply our needs. Unfortunately, because of high wages dangled like carrots beneath the noses of youngsters, they began scorning local industries in favour of working for the oil company, but once the terminal is fully operational many workers will be made redundant and unemployment, which has never been a problem in Shetland, will become rife because knitting machines have been allowed to rust and fishing boats laid up through lack of labour!'
In the heat of the moment she took her eyes from the road just long enough to cast the driver a withering look and though her lapse of concentration was minimal, the time taken was sufficient to allow damage to be done. The moment her eyes slewed back towards the windscreen a dark patch of shadow loomed.
'Look out!' the driver yelled.
She braked, throwing him violently sideways, then swung the wheel hard around in an attempt to avoid hitting the shape that stood frozen for a second in the blaze of fog-lamps before bolting for cover under a blanket of thick mist. Frantically she spun the wheel in a reverse turn, but in spite of the car's crawling speed the correction came too late to prevent a sickening lurch when one side of the car tipped sideways into a ditch, leaving the remaining two wheels spinning madly about a foot above the surface of the road.
'Are you all right, miss?' In spite of their comparatively gentle landing the driver looked shocked, his face a white mask of concern peering out of the gloom.
'I… I think so.' She released her safety belt and gingerly stretched her limbs. 'Yes, I'm still in one piece what about you?'
'Scared out of my wits! What the devil was that… that thing that loomed out of the mist?'
'Nothing more sinister than a Shetland pony,' she confessed ruefully. 'I'm sorry, I ought to have remembered that all during summer they're allowed the freedom of hills and moors and at times can become a bit of a nuisance. However, regrets will get us nowhere, the most pressing problem is how are we going to cover the last few miles between here and the base walk?'
'Fortunately, that won't be necessary.' Leaning sideways out of the precariously tilted passenger seat, the driver reached beneath the dashboard towards what appeared to be a small black box that had protruding flex with a microphone attached. Keeping one hand upon the dashboard to maintain his balance, he fiddled with the controls to disperse noisy static before speaking into the microphone.
'Hello! Wheeler calling base. Wheeler calling base! I want to report an accident. Over!'
In a matter of seconds a female voice responded over the airways.
'Base to Wheeler. Come in, Wheeler, we're receiving you!'
Catriona slumped into her seat, then shot upright when a savage, clipped, masculine tone of authority crackled out of the receiver,
'Casson to Wheeler—what the blazes have you been up to, is anyone injured? State your position, then stay put until a breakdown gang arrives. Don't move a muscle or they'll never damn well find you!'
CHAPTER FOUR
SANDRA, the young receptionist whose sex signals seemed permanently set at green for 'come on', gave Catriona a surprisingly sympathetic look when at almost eleven o'clock, more than two hours after the time she should have begun work, she stumbled into reception and stood for a second to adjust her crumpled skirt, pat her hair into place, and erase all other signs of flustered haste.
Drawing upon experience gained while assisting Professor Sandwick in an experiment to test people's capacity to transmit moods and emotions without the use of words, Catriona, after studying her wardrobe carefully, had finally decided to wear a smart black dress buttoned high up to the neck, with long, tightly-cuffed sleeves and a slim-cut skirt tapering down to a hem settling a couple of respectable inches below the knee, hoping to transmit to her new boss a message of aloof reserve. But Sandra, whose loose open-weave sweater had been designed to provoke tantalising speculation as to whether or not its wearer was bra-less, obviously nurtured no such inhibitions.
'Prepare to be verbally mauled!' she hissed through glossy, plum coloured lips. 'The lion is rampant!'
'Thanks for the warning,' Catriona grimaced. 'I suppose he arrived at the office at eight-thirty prompt?'
'Goodness, no!' With a shake of her immaculately groomed head Sandra sent Catriona's spirits soaring before zooming them back to zero. 'Leon is a human powerhouse, he never starts work later than seven each morning. By the time you were due to arrive he had a pile of correspondence ready for your attention and between then and now he's had a meeting with union leaders, shared a working breakfast with middle management personnel, and he's now prowling his lair waiting for you to accompany him to a delayed board meeting!'
Exerting tight control upon panic-stricken nerves, Catriona hurried through reception, tapped lightly upon the office door, then nerved herself to enter the lion's den. He was working at his desk, simultaneously scribbling notes and dictating into a recorder. Without raising his head he waved her towards a chair, then humiliatingly ignored her presence while he resumed instant concentration, glancing through sheafs of government directives, at the same time taking notes and dictating replies to questions on a totally different subject. She could almost hear his brain humming as she sat tense, fists clenched tightly in her lap, mentally rearranging her erroneous impression of drawling Texans prone to lying lazily as cattle under a tree, chewing cud, contemplating nothing in particular.
She had become lulled into an attitude of mild complacency, exploring with her eyes his mane of russet-red hair—spark-flecked where a spotlight was raying down upon one temple—swept back from a formidable brow scored deep with concentration, wondering whether hooded eyes were slumbrous or flaring danger-bright, when he flung down his pen to address her sharply.
'Now, Miss Dunross, I'm ready to listen to whatever excuse you've cooked up for your late arrival.'
Her absorption was so complete that when he snapped his words she jerked so violently that her skirt rode up, exposing a glimpse of thigh and a pair of smooth rounded knees. Almost as a reflex action she jerked the hem downwards, and immediately regretted providing extra ammunition for his sarcastic tongue.
'Calm down,' he mocked coldly, giving her no time to reply to his accusation. 'Obviously you're mindful of the basic Muslim rule that whatever a man can see he's allowed to touch. However, as I live by the maxim, "To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven" your attempted switch-off was unnecessary. My only pressing need at this moment is for a secretary to be available when she's needed, one who can be relied upon to turn up on time whatever the vagaries of the weather.'
Catriona had fully intended to apologise for her late arrival even though it was no fault of her own, had even been prepared, to grovel slightly in spite of the fact that no reasonable person in possession of the salient facts could condemn her for being involved in an accident, but in spite of her good resolutions she responded to his verbal scratch with an aggravated spit.
'I thought we'd agreed that I was to be treated in exactly the same way as you would treat a male secretary, Mr Casson,' she rose to her feet to glower. 'That's hardly the type of dialogue one would expect to hear directed towards a male employee! If ever we're to achieve a satisfactory working partnership, I sugges
t you try avoiding the sex-object syndrome which is destructive of men and women as individuals and creates hostility between people who, given the chance to forget that they are each members of a different sex, might manage to work together quite amicably. Here and now, I would like to draw the line our relationship is to take, Mr Casson. While some women may appreciate the elemental-caveman, swinging-super-stud approach, I would very much prefer to be excluded from the "Me Tarzan… You Jane" type of situation!' Trembling as near as she dared towards the dumbfounded beast whose fangs she had so savagely drawn, she scrutinised his heavily-leaden desk and said coolly, 'And now, acting upon the premise that silence may be taken for consent, I intend starting work. If you would be good enough to indicate the pile of correspondence to which replies have been dictated…?'
Though she was quaking in her shoes she betrayed no inkling, not even when, with a hissed-in breath of astonishment, he uncoiled from his seat and stalked around the desk to tower above the flaxen plait pinned into an elegant coil on top of her defiantly tilted head.
'Brave words, Miss Dunross;' he threatened with thinly concealed anger, 'wisely directed from behind a palisade of petticoats, for, as I'm certain you've realised, if a man had dared speak to me in such a manner I would have rewarded his gall with a sock in the jaw!'
She blanched from the suspicion that, with temper aroused, he was quite capable of taking her at her word by treating her as he would another man, and felt only slightly reassured when he continued with deadly deliberation, 'I would be well within my rights to dismiss you for impertinence, but that would be taking the easy way out, and far less satisfying than ensuring that you're made to work out your contract until either I grow tired of the novelty of taming a vixen, or you come crawling on your belly begging to be released!'
For the following two hours Catriona worked steadily through a pile of work left neglected for weeks because of Leon Casson's stubborn determination to mark time until his personnel department had managed to find a replacement for the comparatively rare male of the species who, as well as being a capable assistant, was also proficient in the twin arts of shorthand and typing. But as she dealt swiftly and efficiently with letters dictated on to tapes and relayed through an earpiece in a crisp, authoritative tone that kept her nerve ends quivering, one part of her mind remained numb, shocked by the impact of a threat delivered with such confidence she had been left in no doubt that it had been meant.
Rapture of the Deep Page 4
