I and My True Love (25 page)

* * *

When Jan Brovic had stepped through the French windows, Bob Turner felt Kate’s arm slide away from his. He let it go. He watched Sylvia and Brovic walk towards the wall of twisted branches at the other end of the terrace. Then he turned abruptly away to stare out over the garden. “Let’s go,” he said at last. “Let’s go inside.”

Kate hesitated. She spoke with embarrassment. “Perhaps we ought to stay.”

“For what?” he asked, still not looking at her. His voice was still low and guarded, but now it was bitter and mocking. “To keep guard?” And from the way she remained silent, he knew he had hurt her. As he meant to hurt. Not Kate. Just whoever it was standing beside him, watching him at this moment. “Coming?” he asked brusquely, coldly, and took a step away from her.

But she didn’t move. She was standing, looking out over the garden, not even watching him. And he didn’t leave her, after all. He stared at the trees, dim shapes lost in darkness, fighting down his impulse to walk away, walk away as far from this terrace as he could.

He didn’t know how long he stood there. Then suddenly, he wanted to laugh. He reached out and took Kate’s arm, drawing her beside him. “Warmer, this way,” he said, and he could give a good imitation of a smile. And by the way she didn’t resist, he could feel she understood his attempt to apologise. “Was that the story you couldn’t solve?” he asked suddenly.

“Yes.”

He looked down at the girl standing beside him. He didn’t say anything more. She had seen the issues as clearly as he had. He tightened his hand on her arm, a good strong grip that comforted them both. Then they both half-turned at the sound of a footstep on the terrace. Stewart Hallis was standing in the shaft of light from the window, glancing around him as he pulled out his cigarette case.

Kate moved instinctively, drawing behind Bob. She said nothing at all; nor did Bob. There had only been the flutter of soft wide skirt, that slight sound of her heel as she had moved. But it drew Stewart Hallis towards them. Seemingly unconscious of anyone else, he had lit his cigarette and then paced across the deserted terrace, slowly and deliberately in their direction.

Bob swung round to face Kate, his back shielding her from the determined footsteps. “Who’s he stalking?” he asked in a low voice.

“Perhaps he only came out for a cigarette.” But her voice was doubtful. That noise of her heel, that movement of her dress, had brought Stewart Hallis too surely towards the pillars.

“Did he?” Bob was listening to the approaching footsteps. “Shall we call his bluff?”

She smiled and put her arms round his shoulders for her answer.

“Okay,” he said, gripping her waist suddenly, and kissed her. Her eyes looked at him in astonishment, and for a moment her lips were rigid. Then she relaxed.

“Sorry,” Hallis said, almost beside them now. “I thought I had the terrace to myself. Stupid of me.”

“What the hell—” Bob Turner turned round to face the man who was standing so still behind them. “Oh, it’s you, Hallis. Looking for someone?”

“Sorry...” Hallis was at a loss for words. “Don’t let me disturb you,” he added, managing a slight recovery. He moved away.

“What’s he doing, prying into all this?” Bob asked Kate. “What’s his idea?”

Kate shook her head. “He was so sure. So sure he’d find someone out here.” Sylvia and Jan, he must have noticed them as they came on to the terrace. But how had he learned about them? Suddenly, she felt cold. Cold and sick.

“Don’t worry, he can’t prowl around now—he knows we’re watching him. I’m pretty sure he didn’t see you, though.”

Kate could believe that, remembering the determined way Bob had kept her out of Hallis’s sight. And yet Hallis had stood there longer than necessary. She looked down at her red dress and hoped that the shadows had been strong enough to blot out its colour.

“There’s someone else coming on to the terrace.”

“Payton?” she asked. This had been her fear. But it was a square-shouldered, compact figure who walked over to the carved balustrade and looked out over the garden.

“One of Brovic’s crowd,” Bob said. It was the man who had fancied himself as an art critic “He has discouraged Hallis completely.” It was true. Hallis was leaving the terrace.

“I must get Sylvia,” Kate said. “We can go in together.” Again she wished that Hallis wasn’t the kind of man who had a quick eye for colour. “Do you think he could see my dress?” she asked as they began to walk along the terrace.

“It was fairly dark,” Bob said reassuringly. “I think we baffled him sufficiently.”

Sufficiently. But not completely, Kate thought.

“Good girl,” Bob said suddenly. “Did anyone ever tell you that before?”

She smiled then. “Not as neatly as you’ve done.”

He looked at her quickly. “Then I don’t have to apologise for taking direct action?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” At least, she was thinking, we won a limited victory: even if it was limited, we still won it.

“Surprisingly,” he said.

And she felt, somehow, that he wasn’t altogether referring to Mr. Hallis’s surprised retreat.

They reached the French windows. “I’ll wait inside the room,” he said. For a moment he watched her walk slowly, unwillingly, towards the shadows at the other end of the terrace. Then he slipped unobtrusively into the room.

* * *

They had stood, close together, unmoving, silent, waiting for whatever might happen now.

“Has Hallis really gone?” Sylvia asked at last.

“I think so.” Jan was listening, his head half-turned to watch the visible segment of terrace through the arched entrance of the pergola. Czernik was now standing at the balustrade, but Hallis had gone. “Yes,” he said. Then he listened to new footsteps. “That’s Kate, coming this way.”

“For me,” Sylvia said.

“That could be a solution.” The worry in his voice gave way to relief.

“Hallis watched us tonight,” Sylvia said. “He followed us out here. Then he
does
know!”

Jan held her hands, looking down at her. “I can’t even see you properly,” he said, pushing Hallis and everyone else away from them. He kissed her gently. “I’ll come to you as soon as I can. Where will you go?”

“Perhaps Whitecraigs. Or Santa Rosita. I don’t know. Kate will tell you.”

He nodded. “Soon,” he said. “I’ll come to you soon. Perhaps even tomorrow, or the next day, I’ll be able to follow you. Whenever it is”—he caught her in his arms—“nothing will separate us again. We’ll be together, Sylvia. For always.”

“For always,” she repeated.

Behind them, on the terrace, they heard the light sound of Kate’s heel.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you, Sylvia.”

“As I love you.”

They kissed again, quickly, awkwardly in their haste, and the last touch of their bodies was only a light fingertip as Sylvia stepped away from him, her arm and his outstretched, her hand slipping through his until he was left with nothing, nothing but the night wind touching his cheek.

He waited a few minutes, pulling on his jacket, lighting a cigarette, postponing the end of his freedom. Then he walked on to the terrace. Czernik turned to greet him.

“Well?” Czernik asked flatly, disbelief in the controlled dry voice. “Has she agreed?”

“Yes.”

“And how does she propose to do it?”

“I followed your suggestions.”

“But will she follow them in turn?” Czernik asked, not yet believing, but relaxing his aggressive sarcasm. “You don’t seem too confident.”

“She’ll follow them. But what’s the use of all this, now? You’ve got what you want, haven’t you?”

“Not altogether. When will you see her again?”

“Whenever we arrange it.”

There was a confidence in Brovic’s voice that impressed Czernik. This could be the end of the siege, he thought: perhaps Brovic had been right in his leisurely approach. Some women had to be handled delicately, slowly, persuaded out of their doubts and misgivings. Certainly, the Pleydell woman was in love; he had seen the proof of that, tonight. And Brovic? He looked briefly at Brovic, standing so still beside him. He said, “She’s very beautiful.”

“Yes.” Brovic’s voice was calm, matter-of-fact, as if it were discussing the weather.

Czernik said, gently, almost sympathetically, “Sometimes you must feel as if you were being pulled back into the past.”

“The past is dead.”

Czernik glanced again at the man beside him, but he had heard nothing he could criticise. Brovic’s voice, his words, had been correct enough. Czernik said abruptly, moving towards the lighted doorway, “Time to leave.”

It’s as well, he thought, that we have other sources of information: women are unpredictable, sometimes too easy to persuade, sometimes too difficult. But in spite of the Pleydell woman’s delay, we have the information we want. And Brovic, even if he has been too slow, is using the right tactics for a contact firmly established with Pleydell. That’s a long-term job of careful planning. Brovic may be more useful than he ever realised.

They stepped into the stream of light. “By the way,” Czernik asked, “how’s your family? I hope they keep well.”

“I hope so,” Brovic said evenly. He looked towards the room. “There’s Vlatov, still talking to the pretty brunette. Egyptian, isn’t she?” He half-smiled. “Does she happen to have a husband of some importance?”

Czernik’s sense of humour didn’t stretch as far as that. “Vlatov,” he said stiffly, “has a weakness for women. But he knows how to ask questions; he knows how to get answers. There, we must give him full credit.” He looked at Brovic. “There, he could teach you, my friend.”

“It was a matter of luck,” Brovic said and shrugged his shoulders. He stepped into the room.

“There is no good luck, no bad luck. Only success or failure,” Czernik said, following quickly.

18

The Hugenberg house was a massive box of pale red brick, with a white pseudo-Georgian doorway set square in its middle. (“The house that dear old Jack built,” Miriam liked to say with a smile for the late John Hugenberg, his solid taste and his equally solid bank-book. “Reminds me of him every time I look at it. Was that his idea, d’you think?”) Now, as Bob Turner brought the Pleydells’ car round to the front of the house by its half-circle of driveway, the door was open to show a cluster of people inside the hall. More goodbyes, Turner thought, and switched off the engine. He looked at the picture framed inside the doorway. A charming picture, he told himself wryly. And once he had thought he envied it.

There was Pleydell, holding his wife by her arm, surrounded by friends. There was Pleydell, handsome in his dried-out fashion, correctly polite in his determined way, congratulating himself on having spent a most successful evening. A strange character. All powerful men have secrets to keep; but Pleydell seemed to have more secrets than most. His assured eyes either flitted warily round the faces of those who were not watching him, or looked off into the distance, but blankly, like shuttered windows. Occasionally they would rest for a moment—usually on the head and shoulders of one of the young men. Then, just as briefly, there was a spark of something like affection, succeeded in an instant by a guarded coolness. For Sylvia, his wife, there was nothing but politeness—charming and graceful, yet watchful, possessive. How many lives is that fellow leading? Bob Turner wondered. Two, at least. And I don’t like any of them.

Kate left the group suddenly. She had become impatient with waiting; or perhaps she, too, felt the charming picture was one she could take no longer. She slipped away, unnoticed, and came out on to the stone balcony in front of the doorway and hesitated there, above the shallow flight of broad brick steps that fanned out to the driveway. Bob watched her for a moment, a dark-haired girl in a flame-coloured dress standing before the white pillars of the door, her black velvet scarf loosely around her shoulders. He waved and called, “Over here, Kate!”

She waved back, and then, as footsteps came out of the house, she turned expectantly. But it was Stewart Hallis. He paused, glanced away; he passed Kate, his face averted as he hurried down the steps into the driveway, and walked quickly towards the parking ground.

Bob Turner watched Hallis disappear into the shadows. Then he got out of the car and went to meet Kate. She was looking after Hallis, too. “He’s got toothache,” Bob said. “Or a bad attack of injured pride.”

“Yes,” Kate said unhappily.

“I’m sorry.” He helped her into the car. “I guess it’s my fault. But I didn’t know that Hallis thought you were his special property. Are you?”

“No.”

He thought about that as he walked round to his own side of the car. “Then why the deep freeze?” he asked as he stepped in beside her.

“He’s angry.”

“With you? Why not with me?”

She shook her head slowly.

Bob Turner said nothing for a moment. “Why did Sylvia ask me to dinner tonight instead of Hallis? I thought she liked him.”

“Up to a point.”

But that point stopped short of Kate? He was beginning to see the pattern now: Hallis uninvited to join the Pleydell group tonight; Hallis arriving alone at the party and then finding Kate monopolised; Hallis wandering out on the terrace, thinking he was going to put Sylvia in her place. “Well, anyway,” Bob said, “he didn’t see you on the terrace.”

“You came in alone. Then I came in with Sylvia. He was watching.”

“I’m sorry,” Bob said, and there was an awkward silence. What the hell could a girl like Kate see in that little bastard? Watching, was he? Watching and counting? “Cheer up, Kate,” he added gloomily. “He’ll blame me, once he calms down.”

“No,” Kate said. “I’m the one who really hurt his pride.” And there’s nothing I can do about it, she thought. There isn’t anything I really want to do about it, anyway. “Was that his idea of humour?” she asked suddenly. “Wandering out on the terrace—”

“We don’t even know what he expected to find,” Bob said, wondering why he should be trying to excuse Hallis. “Perhaps he just likes to prowl around dark terraces.”

“Perhaps,” Kate said, but her lips tightened.

At least, Bob thought, we didn’t have to talk about Sylvia and Pleydell as we waited for them: Stewart Hallis has his uses, after all. He tapped a sharp brief note on the car’s horn and caught the Pleydells’ attention as they at last came out of the house. Now Payton Pleydell had his arm through Sylvia’s. He guided her carefully down the steps to the driveway. The devoted husband, Bob Turner thought with one last touch of bitterness. “Does he know what’s going on?” he asked suddenly.