‘It’s not! The point is that you’ve been messing round with other people’s lives like ... like some damned teenager. Which you’re not, although nobody could ever tell, the way you act sometimes.’
Silence.
‘Well?’
‘I said I was sorry.’
‘Not good enough.’
‘Didn’t you even enjoy the dancing? It should have been wonderful, what it cost me for the tickets.’
‘I’m surprised you don’t expect me to pay you back.’
Silence.
Cruel, that. Vashti felt the first flutterings of unease. Perhaps, she thought, she was making too much of this entirely. Except that she was still angry!
‘You probably should; you’ll thank me for this one day.’
‘Well, if that ever happens, which I doubt, I will indeed pay you for the tickets,’ she snapped, only to find that remark the final flurry of her anger. She wanted to maintain the rage, even though she probably should, but couldn’t do it.
‘Look, Alana,’ she said, ‘this isn’t the time or the place to even be discussing this. I’m angry and you’re upset and neither of us is making much sense any more. How about I accept your apology and we’ll just let it go for now. OK?’
Alana sighed, the sound forlorn through the emptiness of the telephone wires. ‘You’re right, of course. And I do apologise, honestly. Not much wonder I’m off the wall; I barely slept all night. Probably,’ she added grimly, ‘the children. See you.’
And she was gone, hanging up quietly without waiting for Vashti’s farewell.
Vashti hung up her own phone, but sat there, half expecting it to ring again, half tempted to ring Alana herself. It was ludicrous, she thought, for both of them to be feeling badly over what had been really no more than a childish prank, committed with the best of intentions.
‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions,’ she muttered at the silent telephone, then wished Alana a different path.
Vengeance, she thought, was fine for some people, but she wasn’t one of them and didn’t want to be. Then she found herself wondering about why Phelan hadn’t answered his telephone when his sister rang. Any number of logical reasons filtered through her mind, but the only one that stuck was Alana’s suggestion that perhaps he hadn’t been there at all.
She had a mental flash of a leech with Janice Gentry’s face, then forcibly ejected the image as unworthy. There had to be five thousand better reasons he hadn’t answered his phone.
At least half of them rattled around like marbles in her skull, only to fly out of the window when he rapped on her door an hour later and she opened it to find him still in his clothes from the night before, looking just as he had at the start of the evening, except for his eyes.
‘Don’t even bother to say it; they look even worse from this side,’ he said, ignoring a more conventional greeting. Vashti, wearing only faded jeans and a T- shirt, her hair crudely twisted up to keep it out of the way, could only stare at him.
‘You look like death,’ she said uncharitably. ‘Are you sober?’
‘As the proverbial judge,’ he replied, and his grin was the same, flashing teeth that seemed rather at odds with those red-rimmed, ravaged eyes. ‘I am prepared to swear that I’ve only had one alcoholic drink since I saw you last.’
‘One drink, but no sleep, I presume,’ she said, waving him inside, then rushing to steady him as he lurched across the lounge, collapsing on to the sofa, where he sprawled as if boneless.
‘What have you been doing?’ Vashti demanded. And had a flash of intuition. ‘Surely not going off on the world’s biggest ever guilt trip over the way you treated Alana last night? She phoned this morning-no, earlier this afternoon, worrying about you because she couldn’t reach you.’
‘Let her worry,’ he sighed. ‘Not that she was. Ail she was doing was checking to see where ... no, whether ... we were ... if you know what I mean. Probably apologised profusely, as she ought. Knows she’s still in deep trouble. Terrible child, my sister. Best of intentions, but a terrible child. Wants her bottom smacked.’
‘She sounded reasonably contrite when she phoned,’ Vashti said. ‘And I think she was genuinely worried about you.’
‘For goodness’ sake, woman. I’m not a child — not even one of her children,’ he said with a half-awake grin that didn’t quite make it. ‘Why in God’s name should she be worried about my staying out all night? I don’t live with her. I haven’t even lived in the same house for about half her lifetime. She’s never worried before; why should she start now?’
‘Well, from the look of you, somebody should worry,’ Vashti retorted. ‘Do you want some coffee?’
‘No coffee. Definitely no coffee. I’ve drunk enough coffee to float the QEII,’ he muttered, somehow managing to sway even in his boneless, sagging slump. ‘Just came to show you something. Unbelievable. All your fault, too, by the way. If anybody should be worried about me, it’s you.’
Reaching, fumbling, he managed to get a hand into the inside pocket of his dinner-jacket. The hand stayed there; his eyelids slumped like empty sacks, then fluttered half open as his hand emerged with a piece of paper which he then waved expansively.
Vashti leaned down to pluck the paper from the air as he let it go, and straightened up to find herself holding a Wrest Point casino cheque for a quite incredible amount.
‘Gambling? You’ve been up all night and half the day gambling?’ She looked at Phelan, whose eyes had. fallen closed again, then back at the cheque, which hadn’t altered.
‘Better than a cold shower,’ he replied with what could have been a cheeky grin if he’d been awake enough to manage it. ‘Takes longer, but…’
‘You’re mad as a meat axe,’ she cried. And meant it. To have won this much, he must have risked, well, half that anyway. No sane person, she thought, could do that.
‘Frustrated.’ The word mumbled out of him as he slumped sideways to lie half sprawled on the sofa with his head hanging over the arm and his feet still on the floor.
Vashti looked at him, then found herself glancing wildly around the room and up to the ceiling as if there might be some deity to offer help. Fat chance!
‘You can’t go to sleep like that; you’ll wake up as a pretzel,’ she muttered, yanking at Phelan’s arm to try to get him upright. Eyes like road-maps stared at her, unfocused, then he wobbled to his feet with her assistance and placidly allowed himself to be led into the bedroom, even to be propped against the wardrobe while she struggled to get his jacket off, then gripped him by the shoulders and swung him round to end up sitting on the edge of the bed.
‘Nice,’ he whispered as she knelt to unlace his shoes and remove them. Then was, thankfully, silent as she fumbled with his tie, irrelevantly noticing the crisp stubble on his chin as she did so.
And now? She drew a deep breath and started on the shirt studs, angrily slapping aside his fingers as he tried to manage them himself. She just couldn’t give him a little push, topple him into her bed still wearing his clothes. But she wanted to; it would be safer.
He helped by falling over by himself once she had his shirt off, though it didn’t make it much easier for her to relieve him of the trousers. She managed, finally, only too aware of the enforced intimacy involved.
‘You’re a worse nuisance than your sister,’ she snarled, fighting the reaction she had to just lean down then and touch him. He was, she thought, quite splendid, his body muscular, lean almost to the point of gauntness. Crisp dark hair, not as coarse as that on his head, curled up from his groin to fan itself across his chest.
Just to look at him caused a frisson of emotion to run through her body, but it wasn’t, Vashti realised, entirely sexual. Asleep now, his facial features had softened, regressed to the patterns of boyhood. He must, she thought, have been a happy child; even in sleep the lines around his eyes were laugh lines, and those surrounding his generous mouth were made by smiling.
Impulsively, she bent to touch his cheek,
to kiss him ever so gently on the forehead. Then she carefully spread the feather quilt over him, picked up his clothes, and slipped out of the room. She hung up the dinner suit, suddenly totally embarrassed, incredibly aware of how he had looked, how he had felt, and the scent of him that still lingered on his shirt. She put the cheque back in the pocket from where he’d taken it, tucked his socks into his shoes and placed them neatly in the hall closet, then yielded to a sudden panic and rushed over to turn off the ringer on her phone.
For a moment she felt exhausted herself, though it had to be impossible since she’d slept most of the dozen hours that Phelan had spent gambling. Gambling! And this the man who’d told her he hardly ever gambled.
The man she now had to admit she wanted in her bed and had wanted there for some time. For all the good it does me, she thought, and wondered for a second if she was going to laugh or cry.
She frittered away most of the afternoon, dusting needlessly, tidying the already tidy, tiptoeing around like a little mouse to avoid making noise, and wondering quite astonishing things, like how Phelan Keene might react if he woke to find her beside him, or waiting here in the lounge in the lingerie she had to admit to herself she’d bought for him and which he’d never seen. She tried to read a book and failed, tried to do the Sunday Tasmanian crossword and failed even worse.
When would he wake up? And what would he do when he did? What would she do? What would they say? In the end, she gave it up, slipped out to her car, and drove over into Lenah Valley to the Wursthaus, where she spent half an hour in conversation with the butcher before finally choosing a selection of sausages — wallaby, hot Greek pork, various others — and a two-person leg of lamb. Over the road she found potatoes and other vegetables, buying an assortment, because she realised she had no idea of Phelan’s taste in food. She struggled to remember what he’d eaten at the botanical gardens that time, but found the picture erased from her mind.
Ah, well, she thought, beggars can’t be choosers, and laughed at the suggestion that a man with that cheque in his pocket might be considered a beggar. She drove home with the refrain of an old television commercial repeating in her mind — feed the man meat!
Her guest was still dead to the world when she peeked into the bedroom on her return, and she forced herself to work quietly as she prepared the meal, determined that the roast would be ready at seven, and, if he wasn’t awake by then, he would be!
The simple, homely acts of cooking and setting the small kitchen table left her mind free to roam uninhibited, and Vashti was occasionally shocked and surprised with herself at the surprises she encountered while chilling the wine, while sneaking round to her neighbour’s herb garden to pinch some fresh rosemary. She was not surprised, however, at the face she made when she went past the open bathroom and caught a glimpse of herself.
‘Grotty,’ she murmured, then had to stifle the laugh that came with her next thoughts. Sneaking into the bedroom, moving with the savage determination of a predator, she managed to emerge with what she’d gone for without Phelan even stirring.
Twenty minutes later, staring at her image in the mirror, she had second thoughts, but forced them away, thinking that Alana would have a fit if she could see Vashti, knowing Phelan’s sister might have a fit anyway, if she knew where he was.
The old miniskirt, allegedly soon to become fashionable again, only just covered the tops of her stockings, and if she wasn’t careful how she sat down the flimsy, frilly, decadent suspender belt was due for the exhibition she thought it had been intended for. Her blouse, this one neither old nor out of fashion, was of the softest jersey, and hugged her breasts with provocative innuendo, rather than being blatant. Just as well, she thought, having summoned up the courage — though only just! — to wear it without a bra.
Not wanting to risk the noise of a shower, she hadn’t been able to wash her hair, hadn’t really needed to since she’d done it during the sleepless hours of the night before, but she’d practically worn out her hairbrush to create a glossy, deliberately careless effect. A little make-up, but only a little, and dangly earrings completed the picture — just right, she thought, for the job of waking a slumbering prince.
She poured herself a glass of wine at six, another when the clock lied and said only ten minutes had passed. She checked the roast, checked it again, and argued with herself about whether to chicken out and put her bra on after all. Won. Or maybe lost, she thought with a self-satisfied grin, but left things as they were.
And at six-thirty precisely, she marched towards the bedroom, having liquefied her courage with a third glass of wine and still not sure it would be enough. She was standing there, hand raised to knock, her eyes closed as she summoned that last, vital bit of nerve, when the door opened a crack and one pale, still bloodshot eye peered out at her.
It looked her up and down; then a disembodied voice said, ‘I see you’re not wearing any trousers. Does that mean I can have them back? Or is this a come- as-you-are party?’
Flustered, she realised all his clothes were hung up in the hall closet, and if he emerged from the bedroom wearing what she left him in...
‘Wait! Wait right there,’ she cried. And rushed to grab up trousers and shirt, thrusting them through the crack in the door as if they were hot enough to bum her fingers. Maybe she only thought she heard a growl of laughter as the door closed. When it opened again she had her back turned, was kneeling to examine the roast, afraid to turn around, almost afraid to speak.
‘Smells wonderful. Would there be time for me to steal a shower before we...?’ The voice oozed chocolate fudge down her back; she could feel the warmth of it, tingled beneath the caress.
‘Of course,’ she said, rising easily to her full height without so much as a wobble of her stiletto heels. ‘There are fresh towels in the cupboard and some of those throw-away razors in the medicine chest.’
She didn’t dare turn around, poised as if for flight until she heard the bathroom door close and the sound of running water.
When he padded out to join her a few minutes later, hair close-kinked with moisture, and wearing only his trousers and shirt, sleeves casually rolled up, the first thing Vashti was aware of was how he looked at her.
It wasn’t, as she had somehow expected — wanted? — a survey of her provocative dress, nor even a glance along the expanse of leg not covered by her choice of skirt. He looked her square in the eye, his own eyes still tired, but warm, friendly, comfortable.
‘I’m not only a worse nuisance than my sister,’ he said, revealing he hadn’t been quite asleep when she’d removed his trousers, ‘but I’m ruder as well. If I’ve presumed by thinking I was invited to the feast you’re preparing, please just tell me to disappear and I’ll try to manage it as gracefully as I can.’
‘You’re invited,’ Vashti replied, not quite sure how to take this Phelan Keene. Did he think she’d be planning a dinner party with him sleeping nearly naked in her bed? Didn’t he even notice the way she was dressed? Was he even awake yet?
‘I’ll just put some shoes on, then,’ he said. ‘Can’t attend Sunday dinner barefoot, not with you looking so delectable.’
Vashti poured him a glass of wine without asking while he sank on to the sofa and put his socks and shoes on, but suddenly found herself totally bereft of any other social graces. She could only stand there watching him, her mind empty of words, her uncertainty growing.
‘Thank you,’ he said when she handed him the glass. ‘And for the use of your bed, too. I have this vague memory of just flaking out, but I imagine I showed you that bloody great cheque … told you what happened?’
‘It’s in the pocket of your jacket,’ she said. ‘And no, you did not tell me what happened. Except that you were gambling, which seemed obvious enough. And gambling rather heavily, for somebody who claims not to indulge very often.’
‘I wish you’d been there,’ he replied with a grin. ‘Although of course if you had been I wouldn’t have dared punt like that, wouldn’t ev
en have been there, I suppose.’
‘You’re making no sense,’ she replied. ‘And please, sit down. You’re making me nervous, hovering like that.’
‘Do I recall you accusing me of getting a world-class guilt complex over how we messed with Alana?’ he said, changing the subject as he turned a kitchen chair round and sat leaning on the back of it.
‘I ... may have said something like that,’ Vashti replied, cautious now. Half asleep, Phelan was manageable; fresh from the shower, alert and wide awake, he was dangerous. ‘I told you that she’d phoned here, looking for you, when she couldn’t raise you at home.’
‘I’ll bet that impressed you,’ he replied with a boyish grin. ‘Bet you lied to her.’
‘I did not. Why should I have? It was the middle of the day, for goodness’ sake, no reason for you not to be here. And I wouldn’t have lied anyway,’ she said, doing exactly that. Then compounded it by adding, ‘Not that it would have been necessary.’
‘It should have been,’ he said with a grin that was now positively wicked. ‘Only my splendid sense of propriety saved you from being ravished last night. I’d give you a wonderful song and dance about how tragic it is to be so saintly and pure, except that I’ve already proved how lucrative it can be. And here I always thought virtue was its own reward.’
Vashti leaned back against the sink, twiddling her wine glass between her fingers. Carefully. The man was as egocentric as his sister, she told herself. Impossible.
‘And what if you’d lost? I suppose you’d have just tried to write it off as research expenses?’
‘Why,’ he said, rising slowly from the chair and stalking over to stand in front of her, fencing her in with his arms after first setting down his own glass, then taking hers and doing the same, ‘do I get the distinct impression you’d rather be a sex object than a research object?’
‘Probably because that’s all you ever have on your mind,’ she snapped, ducking beneath his arm to the questionable freedom of a flat that suddenly seemed to shrink round the two of them. Phelan didn’t pursue her; he assumed her earlier stance, leaning back comfortably as his eyes ranged over Vashti’s tense figure.
A Taxing Affair Page 13
