Tim (19 page)

Some change in him made her glance toward his face, to find that he watched her wearily but curiously; the blood felt so hot beneath her skin that she half waited for him to comment, but he did not. With a crablike motion she sat on the edge of the bath and rubbed the soap into his chest and back, her slippery fingers sliding over the flawless skin which was like oiled silk, casually straying every so often to his wrist to check his radial pulse. But he did seem better, if still listless, and he actually laughed when she threw water over his head and made him bend far foreward to wash his hair. She did not let him linger, but made him stand up the moment he was washed thoroughly, then she let the water out of the tub and turned on the shower. It amused her to see his naive pleasure in the huge towel she handed him when he stepped on to the floor, but she managed to listen gravely while he assured her he had never seen such an enormous towel before and what fun it was to be completely wrapped up like a baby.

"That was beaut, Mary," he confided, lying in bed with the covers drawn up to his chin. "I think Mum used to bathe me when I was a little shaver, but I don't remember it. I like being bathed, it's much nicer than bathing myself."

"Then I'm glad," she smiled. "Now I want you to roll over on your side and go to sleep for a little while, all right?"

"All right." He laughed. "I can't say night-night, Mary, because it's the middle of the day."

"How do you feel now, Tim?" she asked, drawing the blinds and plunging the room into semi-darkness.

"I feel all right, but I'm awfully tired."

"Then sleep, love. When you wake up you can come and find me, I'll be here."

The weekend passed fairly uneventfully; Tim was quiet, still not himself physically, but Mary saw little to indicate that he was as yet actively missing his mother. On Sunday afternoon she made him sit in the front of the big Bentley, and drove back to Surf Street to pick up Ron. He was waiting on the front veranda, and when he saw the car draw up he ran down the steps two at a time, suitcase in hand. How old he is, Mary thought, twisting around to open the back door. In spite of his neat, wiry physique and his boyish way of moving, not a young man at all. The sight of him worried her; all she could think of was Tim left utterly alone, bereft of both mother and father. After Dawnie's outburst on Friday there seemed little likelihood that she could or would compensate; her husband had gained the ascendancy. A good thing for Dawnie perhaps, but it boded ill for her erstwhile family. And how on earth could she, Mary Horton, possibly take in Tim if anything happened to Ron? It seemed that everyone thought the worst now, so what would they think and do if Tim came to live with her permanently? The very thought appalled her. Only Ron, Archie Johnson, old Emily Parker next door, and Tim himself thought the relationship was a good thing. She shrank from even imagining what Dawnie would say, and what she might do. Certainly there would be a scandal, maybe a lawsuit as well; but whatever happened, Tim must be shielded from harm and ridicule. It didn't really matter what became of her, or Dawnie, or their lives. Tim was the only one who mattered.

In spite of his shock and grief, Ron was amused at Tim's behavior on the trip to Gosford, how he glued his nose to the window and stared raptly at the passing scene, fascinated. Mary caught him looking at his son when her eyes went to the rear-vision mirror, and she smiled.

"It never palls, Mr. Melville. Isn't that a wonderful thing, to know that he enjoys every trip as much as the first one?"

Ron nodded. "Too right, Miss Horton! I never realized that he enjoyed traveling so much. From what I remember of the few times we tried to take him out in a car, he hurked over everything. What a mess! And terribly embarrassing, because the car wasn't ours. If I'd known he would grow out of it, I would have bought a car and taken him round a bit. Makes me mad I didn't try later on, seeing him now."

"Well, Mr. Melville, I wouldn't be upset about it. Tim is always happy if everything is going well. This is just a different sort of happiness for him, that's all."

Ron did not answer; his eyes filled with tears, and he had to turn his head away to gaze out of his own window.

After she settled them into the cottage, Mary prepared to return to Sydney. Ron looked up, dismayed.

"Crikey, Miss Horton, are youse going? I thought you was going to stay here with us?"

She shook her head. "Unfortunately, I can't. I have to be at work tomorrow; my boss has a week of very important meetings and I must be there to support him. I think you'll find everything you might need. Tim knows where things are, and he'll help you if you have any problems in the kitchen or around the house. I want you to make yourselves absolutely at home, do exactly what you like when you like. There's all sorts of food, you won't run short. If you find you have to go into Gosford, the number of the local taxi service is in the telephone notepad, and I insist that you charge it to me."

Ron stood up, for she was drawing on her gloves, ready to go. He shook her hand warmly and smiled.

"Why don't youse call me Ron, Miss Horton?

Then I can call youse Mary. It seems a bit silly to go on calling each other Mister and Miss."

She laughed, her hand resting on his shoulder caressingly for a moment. "Yes, I agree, Ron. Let's make it Ron and Mary from now on."

"We'll see youse when, Mary?" Ron asked, not knowing whether as a guest he ought to see her off her own premises or just return to his easy chair.

"Friday night sometime, but don't wait supper for me. I may have to stay in town and eat dinner with my boss."

It was Tim who saw her to the car; surprised, Ron watched his son thrust himself between them rather like a dog bristling with annoyance because it has been forgotten. He took the hint and sat down again with his newspaper, while Tim followed Mary outside.

"I wish you didn't have to go back, Mary," he said, staring down at her with a look in his eyes she had never seen there before, and could not identify.

She smiled, patting his arm. "I have to go, Tim, I really do. But that means I have to rely on you to look after your Pop, because he doesn't know his way round the house or grounds, whereas you do. Be good to him, won't you?"

He nodded. His hands, slack by his sides, moved and clenched in on themselves. "I'll look after him, Mary, I promise I'll look after him."

He stood watching the track until the car had gone into the trees, then turned and went back into the house.

Twenty

Mary's week was quite as hard as she had expected. Of the several meetings the Board of Constable Steel & Mining held during the year, this was the most important one. Three representatives of the parent firm in the United States flew in from New York to attend it. There were the usual secretarial problems related to unsatisfactory hotels, unavailable foods, bored wives, lagging schedules, and the like; when Friday night came Mary's sigh of relief was as heartfelt as Archie Johnson's. They sat in his office on the top floor of Constable Tower with their feet up, staring dazedly out at the spinning panorama of lights spreading away in all directions to the star-struck horizon.

"Christ on a bicycle, Mary, am I glad that's over and done with!" Archie exclaimed, pushing away his empty plate. "That was a jolly good idea of yours to have a Chinese meal sent up, it really was."

"I thought you might like it." She wiggled her toes luxuriously. "My feet feel like size fourteens, and I've been dying to take my shoes off all day. I thought Mrs. Hiram P. Schwartz would never find her passport in time for the plane, and I had ghastly visions of having to put up with her for the weekend."

Archie grinned. His impeccable secretary's shoes were lying higgledy-piggledy on the far side of the room, and she had almost disappeared into the maw of an enormous chair, her stockinged feet propped up on an ottoman.

"You know, Mary, you ought to have adopted a mentally retarded kid years ago. Sacred blue-arsed flies, what a difference it's made in you! I've never been able to do without you, but I confess it's a great deal more fun to work with you these days. I never thought I'd live to see the day when I'd have to admit I actually enjoyed your company, you nasty old twit, but I do, I really do! To think that all through the years it's been there inside you the whole time, and you never let it out once. That, my dear, is a bloody shame."

She sighed, half smiling. "Perhaps. But you know, Archie, nothing ever happens out of its due time. Had I met Tim years ago I would never have become interested in him. Some of us take half our lives to awaken."

He lit a cigar and puffed at it contentedly. "We've been so busy I haven't had a chance to ask you exactly what happened last Friday. His mother died?"

"Yes. It was dreadful." She shivered. "I took Tim and his father Ron up to my cottage last Sunday, and left them there. I'm going up to join them tonight. I do hope they're all right, but I suppose if they'd had any problems I would have heard from them. Tim hasn't realized yet what's happened, I think. Oh, he know his mother's dead and he knows what that means, but the concrete reality of her going hadn't begun to work on him, he hadn't begun to miss her before I left. Ron says he'll get over it very quickly, and I hope he does. I feel very sorry for Ron. His daughter made quite a scene when I went out to pick up Tim on Friday."

"Oh?"

"Yes." Mary got up and went to the bar. "Would you like a brandy or something?"

"After Chinese food? No, thanks. I'll have a cup of tea, please." He watched her move around behind the bar to the little stove and sink. "What sort of a scene?"

Her head was bent over the kettle. "It's a little embarrassing to talk about it. An ugly scene, let's leave it at that. She-oh, it doesn't matter!" The cups rattled.

"She what? Come on, now, Mary, spit it out!"

The eyes looking at him were bright with defiance and wounded pride. "She implied that Tim "was my lover."

"Great sausages of shit!" He threw back his head and laughed. "Way off base, way off base! I would have told her that if she'd asked me." He heaved himself out of his chair and came to lean on the bar. "Don't let it upset you, Mary. What a wart the girl must be!"

"No, she isn't a wart. She married a wart, that's all, and he's doing his best to wartify her. I don't honestly think that what she said was anything more than a parroting of what her husband had been whispering in her ear. She's very fond of Tim, and intesely protective." Her head went down below the level of the bar top, and the next words were muffled. "You see, they all thought I was much older than I really am, so when I appeared to collect Tim they all got rather a shock."

"How did they get that impression?"

"Tim told them I had wh;te hair, and because I had white hair Tim assumed I was old, really old. So he told them I was very old."

"But hadn't you ever met them before the mother died? It isn't like you to sneak around back alleys, Mary! Why didn't you correct their misapprehension?"

She flushed painfully. "I honestly don't know, why I didn't ever introduce myself personally to Tim's parents. If I did have any fears that they'd stop the friendship if they found out my true age, I assure you those fears were quite unconscious. I knew Tim was perfectly safe with me. I enjoyed hearing about Tim's family from him, and I think I was sort of postponing meeting them because they wouldn't be at all like the people Tim talked of."

He reached over the counter and patted her shoulder. "Well, not to worry. Go on, you were saying Tim's sister is very fond of him?"

"Yes. Tim was as fond of her as she was of him until she got married, when he rather grew away from her a little. He seemed to feel she had deserted him, though I tried to reason with him. From all he said about her, I had gathered she was a sane, sensible, warm-hearted sort of girl. Very brilliant. Isn't that strange?"

"I don't know. Is it? What did you do?"

Down went the head again. "I was devastated. I think I cried. Fancy me crying!" She looked up, trying to smile. "Boggles the imagination, doesn't it?" Then she sighed, her face pensive and sorrowful. "But I've done my share of crying lately, Archie, I've done my share of crying."

"It does rather boggle the imagination, but I believe you. Still, we should all cry occasionally. I've even cried myself," he admitted grandly.

She laughed, relaxing. "You are, in your own language, a bot, Archie."

He watched her pour the tea, something akin to pity in his eyes. It must have been a terrible blow to her pride, he thought, to have this rare, treasured thing reduced to such an elemental level. For to her the very thought of a physical component debased it; she had a monkish outlook on life, and was it any wonder? Such a strange, sequestered, isolated life she had led! We are what we are, he thought, and we can be no more than what circumstances have made us.

"Ta, dear," he said, taking his tea. Sitting in his chair once more staring out the window, he spoke again. "I'd like to meet Tim some time if I may, Mary."

There was a long silence behind him, then her voice came, very quietly. "One of these days." She made it sound very far away.

Twenty-one

It was after midnight when Mary parked the Bentley outside the cottage. The lights were still on in the living room, and Tim came bounding out to open the car door. He was trembling with joy at the sight of her, and almost lifted her off the ground in a suffocating hug. It was the first time his emotions at seeing her had overridden the training of years, and it told her more than anything else could have done how miserable he had been all week, how much he must have missed his mother.

"Oh, Mary, I'm so glad to see you!"

She disengaged herself. "My goodness, Tim, you don't know your own strength! I thought you'd be in bed by now."

"Not before you came. I had to stay up until you came. Oh, Mary, I'm so glad to see you! I like you, I like you!"

"And I like you, and I'm very glad to see you, too. Where's your Pop?"