Summer Storm (13 page)

She did not want anyone at school to know they had gotten back together again. “Please, Kit,” she had said just before he left her that morning. “I need a little time to adjust myself. I can’t bear the thought of all these people looking at me the way they will look if they know.” Color had stained her cheeks and her voice had trailed off.

He had frowned. “If it was up to me, I’d simply move right in here. There isn’t any need for explanations. We’re married.”

“I know. But I’m not ready yet. Please, Kit,” she had said again, this time a little desperately, and he had given in.

She didn’t quite know herself why she was so reluctant to make public the fact of their reconciliation.
It
had something to do with the fact that she was hardly reconciled to the reconciliation herself.

She knew how she felt about him, but she didn’t quite trust his feeling for her. He wanted her and he was very adept at getting what he wanted. But would he continue to want her or would it be, as it had been before, a case of out of sight out of mind.

She would have to move to California; she had reluctantly come to that conclusion. He might do an occasional stage play, but the bulk of his work was in the movies and the movie industry was in California. She wanted to be separated from him as little as possible; she remembered all too vividly what had happened the last time they were separated.

She should see a doctor about birth control; that thought crossed her mind a few times during the week that followed. If they kept on the way they were going, she was sure to get pregnant. She would love to have Kit’s baby, but she wasn’t sure what his reaction would be. She was afraid to ask him. That topic by unspoken consent was taboo between them.

She should send in her resignation to the university as well, but she procrastinated about that too. She felt as if her whole life were off balance and a little unreal; the only reality was the night, when her bedroom door opened and Kit came in.

“It’s the strangest feeling, hearing people talk about Chris Douglas,” she said to him as the dawn came up on Saturday morning. “I keep thinking, That’s
Kit
they’re talking about, my husband, the man who neglects to shave before be comes to bed and scratches me all up with his beard.”

He gave a warm, sleepy chuckle. “Poor love. I’ll shave tomorrow night.”

She kissed the top of his head where it lay pillowed on her breast and then went back to her original thought. “I just can’t seem to reconcile
that
person, Movie Star Christopher Douglas, with you. It’s very peculiar.”

“No, it’s not,” he answered. “Everyone else sees the facade, the reputation, the good nose and the straight teeth. You see
me.
You always have. That’s what I love about you. You see right through to the heart of people. Phoniness and sham simply collapse in front of you.”

She was silent for a long time. “I think that’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me,” she said at last.

“Um.” She felt his eyelashes against her skin as his eyes closed. Outside the birds began to sing.

“It’s getting late,” she said. “I hear the birds.”

“ ‘It is not yet near day,’ ” he answered sleepily. “ ‘It was the nightingale, and not the lark, that pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear.’ ”

“Kit!” She laughed and shook him a little. “Stop quoting
Romeo and Juliet
and get up.”

“No,” he answered simply.

“ ‘It was the lark, the herald of the morn; no nightingale,’ ” she quoted back severely.

“You’re a spoilsport.” He sat up, yawned and stretched. “For how much longer do you mean to keep me creeping in and out of your bedroom in the dead of night? I’m getting too old for such exploits.” He got out of bed and picked his jeans up from the bedside chair.

“Until after the play opens,” she answered, pushing her hair off her forehead. “I know you think it’s silly of me. I even think it’s silly of me. But I can’t help it.”

“For a smart woman you can be awfully illogical.” He pulled a shirt over his head.

“I know,” she replied a little glumly.

“Look, Mary.” He sat for a minute on the edge of the bed. “You and I have got to talk. It’s no good thinking we can talk at night; I’ve got other things on my mind when I come in here.”

“I’m a little distracted myself,” she murmured.

He grinned and kissed the tip of her nose. “Let’s go out somewhere for dinner tonight.”

“Kit, I would love that,” Mary replied fervently. The endless bridge game had gotten on her nerves this last week, but she hadn’t known how to get out of it.

“Great. I’ll find some quiet spot and make a reservation. Not, I hasten to add, in my own name.”

“Will it be all right?” she asked as second thoughts struck her. “What will you tell George?”

“I will tell him that I am taking my wife out to dinner,” he said with wicked simplicity, got up off her bed and left.

Mary took her time dressing for dinner that evening. She had spent the whole afternoon in the library, hidden away from the press of people she was feeling so acutely this week. It was difficult to behave around Kit as she had last week, when she had been determined to keep him at a distance, and she was afraid her changed feelings were obvious. She felt, with what was perhaps hypersensitivity, that everyone was looking at them, and wondering.

She wore her white linen suit, the dressiest outfit she had brought with her, and took pains with her hair, blowing it dry carefully so it feathered softly back off her face and curled smoothly on her shoulders. At precisely seven o’clock she heard a horn toot outside, and she picked up her black patent leather purse and went out the door.

“How crass,” she said as she got into the car. “Honking the horn for me. You might have knocked on my door.”

He grinned. “When I was a kid I always longed to pick up my date by blowing on the horn. Unfortunately, I could never afford a car.”

“Poor deprived darling,” she murmured sympathetically. “Well, if you want to enact your adolescent fantasies, who am I to stop you?”

“Do you want a punch in the nose?” he asked amiably.

She laughed. “Not really. Where are we going?”

“A place George suggested. The Elms, it’s called. He said the food is
good
and the customers are mostly local people.”

“Good,” said Mary. “You can usually count on New Englanders not to bother you.”

It was her first experience of going out with Kit since he had become famous. He parked the car himself in the restaurant lot, and they walked up the stairs of the old clapboard inn and into the lobby. “Mr. Michaels,” Kit said pleasantly to the hostess. “I have a reservation for seven-thirty.”

The woman’s eyes widened as they took him in. She looked nervously at her reservation chart. “Yes, c-cer-tainly,” she stuttered. “Come right this way, sir.”

Mary was thankful to see it was a corner table, but the walk across the room seemed endless to her. One or two people glanced idly up as they passed and then froze as they recognized Kit’s face. It was not a face, Mary thought ruefully as she sat down and regarded him across the table, that one was likely to mistake. He had picked up the menu and for a minute she regarded him, trying to see him as others must, as these people throughout the dining room, all peering surreptitiously at their corner, must see him. She looked and saw a tall, very tan, leanly built man in a lightweight gray suit. His hair was black as coal, black as night, black as hers. He looked up and she smiled a little to herself. She could never see him dispassionately; it was impossible.

“Do you know, I believe this is the first time I’ve ever seen you in a suit,” she said. “It becomes you.”

“That’s true. I didn’t own one when we were married, did I?” The waiter appeared at his elbow and he asked her, “Do you want a drink?”

“Yes. I’ll have a vodka martini on the rocks.”

“I’ll have a whiskey sour,” Kit told the waiter.

When the man returned with their drinks he put the martini in front of Kit and the whiskey sour in front of Mary. They exchanged a glance of secret amusement, and after the waiter had gone, Kit changed the drinks. “It’s so embarrassing, having a hard drinker for a wife,” he said mournfully.

She sipped her martini. “I can’t help it if you only like sissy drinks.”

“I wasn’t brought up in a nice alcoholic middle-class family. I developed a taste for beer at an early age, and I haven’t changed.”

“You like milk even better,” she said.

“Good God, Mary, don’t ever let that get out,” he said in mock horror. “Think of my rough-and-tough reputation.”

She smiled at him, a warm and beautiful smile. “I’ll protect your secrets to the death.”

“Will you?” He put a hand over hers on the table. Involuntarily she glanced around. At least half the restaurant was looking at him. She pulled her hand away and felt the color flush into her cheeks. “Ignore them,” he said. “They’re behaving very well, really. After a few minutes they’ll stop looking.”

She sat back and tried to relax. “I suppose you’re used to it by now.”

“You never really get used to it. It’s just something you have to live with.” He glanced over her shoulder. “Ah,” he said. “Here it comes.”

A man appeared at their table carrying a pad and a pencil. “Mr. Douglas,” he said a little nervously and with a definite New York accent. “Would you mind giving me your autograph? It’s for my daughter. She just loves your pictures.”

As Mary watched, a still and guarded look of cold courtesy settled over Kit’s face. It was the mask, she realized, behind which he must have learned to hide from a continual public scrutiny. “I’m sorry,” he said coolly, “but I don’t give autographs when I am not working.”

The man looked nonplussed and backed away a little. “Sorry,” he said.
Kit
nodded coldly and after a minute the man turned and left.

“You were rather brutal,” Mary murmured after a minute.

He looked at her. “If I had signed that paper, we’d have had the whole damn restaurant over here for autographs. Now they’ll leave us alone.”

“Yes,” said Mary, a little unhappily. “I suppose that’s true.”

He smiled at her expression. “You were brought up to be polite. I wasn’t. Actually, I don’t believe in being polite.”

Mary sighed. “I’m learning, believe me.”

“Let’s order,” he said, and handed her the menu.

The meal was delicious and Mary felt herself relaxing as they ate and drank the bottle of wine Kit had ordered to go with it.

“I’ve decided I’ll move to California with you,” she said as she savored a perfect filet mignon.

His face blazed into happiness. “Do you mean that?”

“Yes. I can probably work at the UCLA library without any trouble. I don’t know about teaching, though. I’d better keep flexible so I can adjust to your schedule.”

“Listen to me, Mary.” He was deadly earnest. “I want you to have your own life. I do not want you to sacrifice what you want to do for me. If you want to teach, teach. It’s what you’re trained for.”

“Actually, I wasn’t,” she returned slowly. “I was trained for scholarship. Scholars usually teach so they can eat, not necessarily because they like it.”

His eyes were looking deeply into hers. “Did
you
like it?”

Her lips curled a little at the corners. “Not particularly,” she said.

His eyes smiled back. “Money isn’t a problem, sweetheart. We have plenty of that. If you want to write books, you go right ahead. You don’t have to worry about a roof over your head. You can have a housekeeper—a cook—a secretary—whatever you want.”

Mary blinked. “Goodness. Do you have all those people?”

“No. I have housekeeper who is extremely crabby but a good cook. We’ll have to find another house, though. You’d hate the one I have now.”

“Why?”

“It’s ghastly,” he said cheerfully. “I bought it from some starlet—bought it furnished. I kind of just close my eyes to the inside of it. I took it because it was isolated and I liked the view.”

“But why didn’t you redo it?” she asked wonderingly.

“I don’t know. It didn’t seem as if it was worth the effort.”

“How long have you had it?”

“Three years.”

“Three years!” She stared at him in astonishment. “You’ve lived in a house you hate for three years and haven’t tried to change it?”

He grinned a little lopsidedly. “It was just a place to hang my clothes and park my car. It never felt like a home. No place feels like a home if you’re not there.”

“Oh, Kit.” The words were barely a whisper. She put down her fork and looked at him. “I’ll make a home for you, darling.”

“I’d like that,” he said simply. “Are you sure you don’t mind giving up your university job? Won’t you miss the contact with all those famous academics?”

“I don’t think so,” she replied thoughtfully. “I think I might do better at a younger, less venerable institution. All the professors at my place are so—stodgy.”

“Even Leonard Fergusson?” He sounded incredulous. Leonard Fergusson was the chairman of her department and a world-renowned scholar.

“I think he’s getting old,” she replied frankly. “He suffers from a certain inflexibility of thought, which sometimes approaches petrification. He also frequently exhibits a disturbing inability to recognize what century he is living in.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “How on earth did he ever hire you?” he asked when he had got his breath back.

“The English department didn’t have enough women. They have only
one
tenured female professor, can you believe it? I was to be his second token woman.”

“Well, one thing California isn’t is stodgy,” he said cheerfully. He put down his knife and fork and looked with satisfaction at his empty plate. “That was good.”

Mary was only halfway through her steak. “Tell me about California,” she said.

“It can be lovely,” he answered promptly. “I think this time I’d like to look for a house on the ocean. Would you like that?”

“I’d love it,” she answered.

“Maybe I’ll get a boat. Like your father’s.”