Deception and Desire (30 page)

But it was not fear of Mrs Brooks's displeasure that was making her hesitate so much as fear of herself and the emotions Van awakened in her every time he looked at her with those navy-blue eyes or simply passed by her machine. She did not even have to see him to know he was there – the strength of his personality was as palpable as if he had reached out and touched her, and a weakness would spread through the very core of her where she imagined she would feel the first fluttering movements of her baby. It was madness, she knew. No one had ever affected her in quite this way before – not Dave Hicks and certainly not Neil. Even though at the time she had thought herself in love with them it had simply been the normal attraction of a girl for a boy who might, if she was lucky, feel the same way about her.

But this … this was more akin to the idolisation of a movie star or a pop singer, glamorous but distant and unattainable. There was no chance Van would notice her, even under the best of circumstances. He was so much older than she was, and though she had discovered he was not married she thought that someone as mature and attractive as he was must certainly have a girfriend or even a fiancée. He also came from a totally different world – he was sophisticated, well-off, ‘the boss' with a lifestyle to match. Even if things were not … as they were … he would never look twice at her; since she was almost three months pregnant it made the dream even more impossible.

That was probably the reason he was having this effect on her, she thought; pregnancy was making her overemotional and silly. But knowing it did not alter the way she felt about him, never quite reached that perverse little core deep inside her that would not let go of the irrational certainty that this was the man she had been meant for, the man she would one day love – and go on loving for the rest of her life.

Yet strangely that day when he asked her out to dinner she believed him when he said it was because he wanted to talk business, and though she was thrilled by the invitation she was half afraid to accept in case she was unable to hide the way she felt about him.

Van being Van, however, he did not give her the chance to accept or refuse. He simply carried on as if there was no question about it.

‘I would prefer to discuss my plans away from the office,' he said. ‘I don't want anyone to know what I have in mind just yet. Which brings me to my other point – I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone about this. There are times in business when it is best to be a little discreet.'

She nodded. ‘I won't say anything. I don't talk much to the others anyway.'

‘No.' He had noticed how isolated she seemed. ‘So – shall we say tomorrow evening?'

‘Oh, I don't know if I'll have thought of anything by then …'

‘Don't worry. We can talk about the ideas you
might
have. Shall I pick you up? About seven thirty?'

‘I'll meet you somewhere,' she said hastily. She did not want Mrs Brooks to see her going off in a big and impressive car, and she was embarrassed for Van to see the grimy little terraced house that was, for the time being, her home. ‘I'll be in the square, by the war memorial.'

He smiled. ‘All right.'

He was still smiling when she left his office.

Dinah scarcely slept that night. In itself this was not unusual – she had had plenty of sleepless nights since the awesome discovery that she was pregnant. But this was different. Instead of tossing and turning, miserably wrestling with her own problems, she lay wide awake, her mind busy with the exciting challenge Van had set her. By morning she had one or two ideas, and at work in the factory she continued to turn them over in her mind while her hands were busy guiding the stiff leather through the machine.

She saw Van once or twice but he scarcely acknowledged her, treating her to the same cursory nod he gave the other employees, and she found herself wondering if he had had second thoughts and might leave her waiting for him in vain. But when she reached the war memorial on the dot of seven thirty he was already there, his blue Jag parked with the engine running.

‘There's a little bistro I know,' he said when she was seated in the passenger seat beside him. ‘I thought we'd go there.'

Dinah nodded, relieved he was not taking her anywhere too grand. She had agonised over what to wear; she had never had many clothes and some of them no longer fitted her properly. Eventually she had settled for a simple blue dress, high-waisted and only semi-fitted, with a boat neckline that showed off the smooth slope of her shoulders, and broderie anglaise trimming on the bodice. Van was dressed formally in a dark suit and silk shirt with a quietly patterned tie, and Dinah wondered anxiously if he had changed his mind about his choice of venue when he had seen what she was wearing.

These fears were allayed, however, when they reached the bistro – a tiny place, mid-terrace, that might almost have been mistaken for a fairly unassuming house – for Van gave his name, saying he had made a reservation, and they were shown to a table at the rear of the restaurant overlooking a small but picturesque garden.

The smell of garlic wafted out to greet them. It had the effect of making Dinah instantly hungry and she nibbled on a bread stick as they waited for their first course to arrive – mushrooms in a wonderful creamy sauce and flavoured with garlic.

‘You'd like some wine, of course,' Van said perusing the wine list.

Remembering the effect alcohol could have on her Dinah shook her head. ‘Could I have water?'

‘Of course.' He ordered a bottle of Chablis and also water, but when the wine waiter brought the bottle, nestling in a silver ice bucket, and he had tested and approved it, he looked at her questioningly.

‘Why don't you have just one glass? It's very good.'

Dinah hesitated. She did not want to appear totally gauche.

‘Well, all right. Just one, perhaps.'

But after a few sips she left the wine untouched. For one thing she really was afraid it might go to her head, for another she did not really care for the taste of the wine. To her untutored palate the fine dry wine compared unfavourably with the Sauternes she had drunk with Neil.

‘Well,' Van said, ‘have you had time to think over what we were talking about?'

He was mopping up the last of his mushroom sauce with a hunk of bread; Dinah, rather shocked by what she knew her grandfather would consider dreadfully bad manners, could not bring herself to do the same.

‘Yes, actually I have,' she said. ‘I've had a couple of ideas but I don't know what you'll think of them.'

‘Try me.'

‘You said perhaps you could expand into the leisure market, and the closest thing to the lines you do at present would be walking boots. For hiking, you know, or maybe even climbing. I'm not sure how they would differ, that's something I'd have to find out. For walking, for instance, comfort would be paramount. But they'd be big and chunky and serviceable, just like the ones you make at present.'

‘Uh-huh. Go on.'

‘Then there are riding boots. Riding seems to be getting really popular, especially with little girls. Where I come from it was only farmers or people with pots of money who rode, but since I've been here I've noticed strings of ponies walking out around the lanes and several boards advertising riding schools. I think …'

‘Where did you come from?' he interrupted.

‘Gloucestershire. And last time I was home I noticed it was the same there. Stables giving lessons, children on …'

‘Where abouts in Gloucestershire?'

Her eyes narrowed; he saw that the shutters had come down. She did not want to talk about her home background for some reason, but her reluctance only made him more curious.

‘Where in Gloucestershire?' he pressed her.

‘A place called Staverley. But I thought we were talking about my ideas, not me.'

A slight smile twisted his mouth. So for all the eager compliance, in spite of that air of shyness and uncertainty, she could bite.

‘Of course. Go on.'

‘Well, obviously riding boots are a rather different proposition. They need to be made out of large pieces of leather so it could be expensive – you wouldn't be able to cut out avoiding the flaws as you do at present. And again it may well need to be softer, better cured.'

He nodded, impressed with the amount of thought she had put in and how much she already knew about boot-making. He was not too happy with this riding boot idea, though, and he said so.

‘The trouble as I see it is that they would be horendously expensive. You're quite right about needing larger perfect sides of leather and they don't come cheap. People might baulk at paying the price. A lot of the children I see out with the riding school wear Wellington boots – and good luck to them. They are multipurpose – and they're cheaper to replace when their feet grow.'

Her face fell and he felt almost guilty.

‘I'd have to get some market research done before embarking on something like that,' he went on. ‘Though there might be a way around it. Some of the synthetics are very good these days. I'll give it some thought. Any other ideas?'

‘Just one. I was thinking about the strips of leather – offcuts do you call them? – that are left over. I hate to see them wasted and I thought of a way of using them.'

‘Yes? How?'

‘Sandals.'

He shook his head. ‘We don't do fashion, or children's shoes. That really is going away from the Kendrick set-up.'

‘Sandals for men.'

‘The pieces wouldn't be big enough for that.'

She laid down her knife and fork. Her eyes were shining again with excitement.

‘I'm not thinking of conventional sandals. I'm thinking of sort of thongs. Biblical-style sandals for young men. The way they dress is getting more casual, they don't want to look like their fathers. They want to wear jeans and casual shirts, beads even, and they need some kind of footwear to go with that look. What's more, biblical-style sandals could almost be unisex. Girls could wear them too. If you were using up off cuts you could turn them out really cheaply, and if they didn't sell you wouldn't have lost very much. But I think they might be a hit.'

Van felt suddenly as if all the hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end. She had something, this half-trained, unsophisticated girl. He'd sensed it the first time he'd seen her when she had walked into his office; now he was certain of it. Exactly what it was she had he couldn't explain, but perhaps it was the ability to look ahead, not back, to forecast trends and set fashions. In the safe, unexciting world of industrial footwear he had seldom had the opportunity to know, much less work with, anyone who possessed that rare gift, but he thought he was looking at it now. She could be wrong, of course, and so could he, but somehow he didn't think so.

The waiter was at his elbow, refilling his glass. Van raised it and though she had scarcely drunk anything so far, she did the same. But even as he smiled indulgently at her and drank the toast his natural caution and his predilection for being in a position to pull the strings was taking over.

Don't let her know how excited you are. Keep her dependent on the need for your approval.

As long as Dinah thought he was the only one who recognised and appreciated her talent she would be in his power. Lose that and he might lose her. At that moment, for a great many reasons, that was something Van was very anxious should not happen.

Dinah was happy, happier perhaps than she had ever been in her life.

The bleak little room at her digs which had so depressed her when she moved in seemed almost homely now; with her own knick-knacks decorating the heavy old dressing table and a huge teddy bear that Van had bought her sitting on her pillow it was a place where she could be alone with her dreams.

Mrs Brooks's sour nature did not bother her any more, and the monotony of her job had ceased to matter. As for the future, Dinah refused to allow herself to think beyond the next time she would be with Van, and with a little practice this habit began to be as easy as it was comfortable. Physically she was feeling much better; the debilitating nausea which had scarcely left her during the first months had gone now and Dinah managed to create a dream world for herself into which the reality of her condition scarcely intruded at all.

Van was her whole world now. She was obsessed with him, he filled every corner of every thought from the time she woke in the morning until the moment she fell asleep at night, and even then he invaded her dreams. She loved the way he looked, loved the uncompromising lines of his face and those incredible dark-blue eyes, loved the resonance of his voice with that slight soft burr, enjoyed the squareness of his shoulders, the solidity of his build. But at the same time she knew that the reason she loved them was because they were the outward manifestations of his personality, they reflected the power and the determination, the steely inner strength, the hard edge that she had only glimpsed at first but which was becoming more and more pronounced.

And of course it was not only Van himself she loved – though in all conscience that should have been enough. She also loved what he was doing for her, opening up a world she had scarcely known existed, both in a real and in a more cerebral sense.

He had taken her out several more times since that first evening, sometimes for a drink, more usually for a meal, but wherever he took her it was in a different league to the places she had frequented as a penniless student, restaurants where the prices on the menu were always in double figures and the size of the bill, when she caught sight of it once when he was signing his American Express chitty, made her gasp. Always there was wine, and although she still drank very little, afraid of the effect it might have on her, she was beginning to get used to the dry taste of it and to like the way it felt on her tongue. She enjoyed the learning process, enjoyed feeling like a child let loose in a glorious adult world, enjoyed being fussed over and pandered to by waiters who took her coat and pulled out her chair for her and spread a napkin on her knees, and if they looked a little askance at her cheap chain-store dresses she never noticed it.