Hold Back the Night (18 page)

'Sander told me you wouldn't be coming back,' Miranda said, staring in surprise. Domini had just burst through the door of the small gallery, trailing wet slush from the thoroughly miserable day outside.

'Wishful thinking on his part,' Domini said lightly, trying to make a joke of it. She began to brush the wet, heavy snow from her neatly anchored hair, but it was the kind of snow that melted quickly, and already the dampness had reached right through to her scalp, darkening the gold and plastering it closer to her head.

'But you haven't been here for several days,' Miranda said. 'I thought...'

'That I'd given up?' Domini forced a faked laugh as she shrugged off her coat with Miranda's help. She had worn neat navy slacks today, and a neat navy sweater over a neat printed shirt, all of them emotional armour against her next encounter with Sander, because she wasn't sure whether she intended to take them off or not. She thought she probably would. She turned to Miranda with a smile.

'The truth is, Sander's joy is in forcing me to adopt difficult poses, and my joy is in proving I have the stamina to do them. Why not? It's cheaper than going to yoga classes, and much better exercise too. Good for the soul.'

Miranda grinned. 'Sander showed me one or two of the maquettes,' she admitted wryly. 'I wondered how you had managed to suffer through the positions he made you hold.'

'Easy,' nipped Domini. 'I'm a masochist.' Her expression became more earnest. 'They're good, Miranda, those things he's doing now. Why, I think they're even better than...'

She bit back the comparison between past and present, and instead said, 'They're better than the things you're showing in your gallery. Why don't you think of handling some of Sander's sculptures down here? It wouldn't cost that much to have those small ones properly cast in bronze, in limited runs. A foundry would do them for a song. You could sell them for a decent price, and I'm sure you'd have no trouble finding customers.'

'Sander won't let me get my hands on even one. He says they're not ready to show.' Miranda eyed Domini dubiously. 'Perhaps you can talk him into it?' she suggested, but with little hope in her voice. 'I'm not sure how you go about it, Domini, but you seem to get your way with him a good deal of the time. And Sander's not an easy man to get around. Usually it's he who manages to get his way.'

'You overestimate me,' Domini said. She turned her back, ostensibly to study a tiresome contemporary canvas out of which the artist had ripped a big triangular hole as his particular contribution to modernism. It was the kind of meaningless painting Domini hated, but she pretended an intense interest. Miranda's words reminded her too forcibly of Sander's parting words the other day, and she needed a moment to readjust her facial muscles into unrevealing smoothness. Sander would most certainly want his way today; his warning could not have been more clearly worded. And much as Domini now recognized the pull of her heart and her body, she was not certain she wanted the kind of pain the future would surely hold in store should she become seriously entangled with a man who loved her no more now than he had loved her four years before.

And yet, despite several days of trying, she had not been able to stay away.

'Actually today I had other reasons for dropping in,' she remarked lightly after a few moments, turning back to Miranda. She fished through her purse and secured her wallet. The necessary bills had already been counted into a neat fold, separate from such other funds as she had in her possession. She extracted them and handed them to the other woman. 'I think that clears up what I owe you for the unicorn,'she said.

'But ... ' Miranda held the bills without riffling through them, looking at Domini in surprise. 'I thought you couldn't... well, that is...'

'No problem,' Domini said. 'A couple of my old clients paid me in advance, and I've found a new one as well.' The new one, Domini realized, was still something of a pipe dream. Grant had verbally awarded her the work, but after the unsatisfactory encounter in his apartment, she had not liked to phone and press for an immediate confirmation. She knew she might yet lose the job. But that was a private business matter and one she had no intention of discussing with Miranda, who had enough problems of her own.

Miranda put the bills into her cash drawer without counting them at all, a sign of trust that Domini found touching, especially when a quick glimpse of the cash-box told her that the till looked to be quite empty, even of the distinctive paper-and-carbon slips that might denote a charge-account sale.

'One other thing, Miranda. Tasey made a present for you.' From her capacious shoulder-bag Domini extracted a pencil holder made of an old tin can, pasted over with coloured paper and lacquered into some semblance of smoothness. 'It was her own idea. She's still talking about the nice lady who gave her ice cream and chocolate syrup.'

'Isn't that wonderful,' Miranda said admiringly as she accepted the prettily coloured gift. She looked at Domini, her expression earnest. 'I wish you'd bring her over to visit,' she said wholeheartedly. 'I absolutely adore children, you know, although I never had any. My husband and I were planning a family, but then he became ill.' She sighed, i'd love to have had babies. Joel says

She stopped, flushed, and busied herself with placing a miscellaneous collection of pens and pencils into the tin can.

'I imagine you'd make a wonderful mother,' Domini remarked, guessing at what Joel might have said.

Miranda's hands stilled at her task, and she looked up with troubled eyes. 'He's asked me to marry him. Oh, Domini, what am I going to do?' She bit her lip, hardly the expression of a woman who had recently received a proposal she must have wanted, judging by other signs. 'Don't tell Sander,' she finished in a low voice.

Domini needed no imagination to understand the dilemma. Although it had not been said in so many words, it must have been Miranda's sense of duty to her brother that had kept her from accepting. And where was the solution for that?

Domini reached a sudden decision, not a solution by any means but at least a step in the right direction. 'What I really stopped for,' she lied, 'wasn't to see Sander at all. I came to ask if you'd like me to mind the shop for a while. You mentioned the problem of finding a new outlet for Sander's toys. Why don't you go off this afternoon and see what you can do?'

Miranda didn't answer at once. 'You're too good to us,' she said at last with difficulty.

Domini kept her voice breezy. 'Not at all. When I think how you took me in that first day, took care of me and Tasey ... Go on, Miranda, you'll be doing Sander a big favour. He doesn't even have to know I'm down here. Besides, I have nothing to do. I freed up my afternoons for modelling, and frankly I'm not sure I want to go back to it again, at least not right away. Your brother is a hard taskmaster.'

'Oh, Domini. . .' But the offer was too good to refuse, so after giving Domini a short initiation into the mysteries and machinery of writing up charge-account bills, Miranda entrusted her with the key to the cash drawer, and hastened off with the suitcase full of Sander's samples, a heavy burden but a necessary one. And so Domini found herself alone in the little gallery, with the rueful thought that should a customer come through the door she could not possibly even pretend to like the artistic offerings herself. Perhaps she was not doing Miranda such a very great favour after all!

The first hour wore on, producing no more than a few bored browsers who seemed to have absolutely no interest in buying, with Domini's persuasions or without. At last, to fill the time that was too occupied with distressing thoughts of Sander, and too little occupied with customers, Domini began to leaf through the neat stack of art magazines and reproductions on the top of the sales desk. Subconsciously she must have known what she would find, and find it she did. She pulled the picture of the unicorn out of the stack and held it in her hands, gazing with a great sadness upon the child she once had been.

Was that really herself, that golden little creature so ready to conquer life? And instead, life had conquered her. Or had it? There had been defeats and victories, pains and pleasures, sorrows and joys, good times and bad. In other words, human times. Sander's words came back again: 'As unreal as you are ...'

Domini remembered and wondered, and in that moment began to mourn a little less for the part of herself that had been so long ago destroyed. She had hated Sander for destroying that part, but what had he really destroyed? Perhaps the little girl had never been truly human at all; perhaps she could never have survived in the real world. But Domini Greey the adult had survived.

And there had been Tasey too. How could she ever have hated Sander for giving her Tasey?

With a sigh, because the reflections were too heavy to be continued for long, Domini started to return the picture to its stack. It was then, for the first time, that she noted it was not a reproduction taken from an art book, but a page neatly cut out of a magazine. An article, or rather part of an article, was on the reverse side. Turning the page over, Domini saw that it had been taken from Time magazine; the issue date was not far removed from the date of Tasey's birth.

The article was about Le Basque, who must have been the subject of that month's lead story on art. Much of the information Domini already knew, but a few small facts were new to her. The auction in which the unicorn had been sold had taken place in New York, about six months after her own arrival in the city, Domini judged. According to the story, the bidding had been spirited. A good deal of publicity had attended the sale, in part because the famous Louvre painting had been concurrently on loan for a tour of major American cities, attracting big line-ups and a considerable amount of press.

No wonder the news had escaped her, Domini reflected wryly. At the time of Tasey's birth she had seldom had the price of a newspaper to spare, let alone the price of a magazine. She realized her father must have arranged to divest himself of the unicorn within a short time of disowning her; such sales could not be arranged overnight. But the hurt to be found in that was something Domini had already dealt with in learning that the unicorn had been disposed of at all, and so she returned the clipping to its niche, carefully covering it with other things so that she would not have to look at it again.

Miranda was dispirited when she returned. 'I went to three stores but didn't make a single sale,' she said as she removed her coat. 'With Christmas already past, it's not going to be easy. The people I talked to were impressed, but they don't want to hold the inventory. They said to come back later in the year.'

'Where's the sample case?' asked Domini.

'I couldn't get to see the buyer at the third store, so I finally left it there. Frankly, by then I didn't think I could carry it another inch, and I knew I had to get back to relieve you before day-care hours were over. I told them I'd return to pick it up tomorrow.' She looked at Domini, weariness and discouragement stamped on her thin face. 'I hate to ask this, but...'

'Yes, of course I can come back,' Domini said quickly. 'Why, I'm just beginning to get the hang of this. Do you know I actually made a sale? Not much, just a small numbered lithograph. I think it was the cheapest thing in the place. It was only forty dollars.'

Miranda brightened considerably. 'Really? I hope you didn't have trouble filling out the charge slips.'

'Not a bit,' Domini came back glibly as she pulled her nutria-lined coat over her shoulders and made ready to leave. 'The customer paid in cash.'

'That's the very best kind!' Miranda exclaimed as Domini gave a cheerful salute and hurried to the door. Slung over her shoulder was a handbag that contained one hastily folded numbered lithograph and almost no money at all.

❧

'Did the ice-cream lady like my present?' Tasey asked over a supper of baked beans and homemade apple sauce.

'She loved it,' Domini said promptly with a small sense of guilt that she had forgotten to pass the news along to her daughter. 'She put it on her desk and filled it up with pencils right away. It looked very nice, and she said to thank you very much.'

'That's the last time I had ice cream,' Tasey complained, curling a small fist around her dessert spoon and making a face at the bowl in front of her. 'You don't buy ice cream anymore. Why?'

'Because I like this just as well,' Domini said firmly.

'Ugh, I hate apple sauce.'

'Don't eat it then,' Domini said cheerfully, knowing Tasey liked apple sauce perfectly well. Unfortunately it had appeared on the menu a little too often recently.

Tasey dug in with a grimace that lasted only as long as the first spoonful, when her mercurial mind turned to other matters. 'When is the man going to keep his promise?'

'What promise?' asked Domini, confused.

'About the story,' said Tasey, downing another mouthful with gusto.

Of course. The story about the unicorn. Grant Manners was not much on Domini's mind, and the word 'man' had triggered thoughts of Sander. Domini put down her spoon, her appetite waning at the thought of disappointing her daughter. For some nights after Grant's visit, now several weeks past, Tasey had been excited at the prospect of a return performance by the person she called 'the piggyback man'. At her young age she had not yet learned that promises were not always kept, and Domini hated to disillusion her.

'I'm afraid he's not going to come back, darling,' she said gently. Whatever business transactions she might or might not effect with Grant Manners, she was absolutely positive that all personal dealings had come to an end.

'But he said.'

Domini wondered how she could explain without making too harsh an impact on the trust that was such an important part of childhood. 'It's sort of like Marie and Matthew, poppet. There are times you can believe people, and times you can't.'

'Then he lied!'

'No, he didn't lie, any more than Matthew was lying when he told you about cabbage leaves. Matthew just didn't know the truth. The piggyback man .. well, you see, he expected to come back. But he won't.'

'Why?'

'Because I'm not going to invite him.'

'Why?'

'Because . . . because he's not my handsome prince. I can't pretend he is, even to make you happy.'

'Why not?'

Damn this 'why' age! It was hard to find logic to satisfy a child of three. 'Because if I pretended,' Domini said, making a stab at a reason Tasey would understand, 'then I'd be lying, wouldn't I? Would you want me to lie?'

'N-nooo,' said Tasey unhappily, but the subject was still on her mind half an hour and a long splashy bathtime later. Domini had just finished telling a bedtime story in order to wind her daughter down for the night, when Tasey murmured sleepily, 'I don't think I want him for a daddy after all. He promised.'

Domini deposited a last gentle kiss on her daughter's brow. 'Go to sleep, darling,' she said softly, but with a small sadness because she recognized that a part of Tasey's trust had been destroyed after all. Should she have encouraged Grant, simply for Tasey's sake? What Tasey wanted and needed was a father, something she might never have. Certainly never from Sander. In thinking about it, Domini decided it was a lucky thing fate had prevented her from taking an irretrievable step that afternoon. Had she spent some hours in Sander's arms, it might be that much harder in future to fall in love with someone else.

Unhappy reflections made it difficult for Domini to produce her evening's work, a sketch of her intended plans for Grant's next window. Under the circumstances she didn't want to approach him again unless well fortified with ammunition to further her cause. It shouldn't have taken long to depict a mannequin gaily dancing behind a semi-transparent bubble while hands from the footlights showered her with diamonds, but it was hard to portray a sparkling mood she didn't feel. It was nearly three in the morning before she was satisfied with her efforts.

Exhausted from her late night, and from a morning spent dressing the window of a travel agency and wrestling with a magic carpet that was too heavy for the invisible wires suspending it, Domini almost begged off her arrangement with Miranda. But she had promised. And so, after a hasty trip home to change into an outfit appropriate for an afternoon as shoplady, she arrived at the little gallery with no expectation of seeing Sander at all. Her neat printed shirt and pleated grey skirt had been put on with no thought of removing them under any circumstances.

Miranda's face was glowing when Domini entered. 'Such marvellous news!' she burst out at once. 'The toys are sold, Domini, soldV

The story tumbled out, words spilling so quickly that it took Domini a few minutes to understand the sequence of events. Evidently Miranda had left the telephone number of Joel's restaurant along with the sample case. A call had come earlier in the morning, expressing interest. Too excited to wait for Domini's arrival, Miranda had closed the gallery and dashed off to follow through.

'Everything will be on consignment, actually, so the money won't come in overnight. But it will come as the toys sell. And they will sell; it's just the right kind of shop! Oh, Domini, isn't it wonderful?'

'Wonderful,' Domini agreed delightedly. If there was some small reservation in her mind, it was because she would have been happier to see Sander pursuing sculpture, and having a ready market for his toys might call a halt to that. 'Have you... told Sander?'

'Of course,' Miranda said happily. 'But do you know, I think he hardly heard me? He was busy building an armature.'

'An armature . . .'Domini's hopes leaped. If Sander was building an armature, then he must be planning to make a larger sculpture. 'Has he finished it yet?'

Miranda shook her head. 'I don't think so. He was working like a fiend this morning, punching metal tubing into shape. He just grunted when I told him about the toys. It doesn't matter, though, there's nearly a year's supply up there.'

The past few years had instilled some caution in Domini, but not enough to prevent impetuous decisions when they were made from the heart. 'I think I'll go up and see if he needs help,' she said without second thought and with no regard for the fact that her clothes were totally unsuitable for the task of building an armature. And as to Sander's threat...

Well, that was very much on her mind as she climbed the stairs to the workshop. The door into the work area was open, and she came to a halt. Sander was at work on the armature, wearing an unbuttoned denim shirt rolled up at the sleeves, arm-deep in a concoction of soft clay with which he had already covered much of the mesh surface of chicken wire shaped over bent tubing.

'You've come back,' he stated without turning around, and Domini knew he must have recognized her footsteps. 'I didn't think you would.'

'Neither did I,' Domini said quietly. 'I didn't come to model, I came to see if I could help. I've had a lot of experience building armatures.'

'I've had a little myself, like any sculptor. In any case it's nearly done.' He smoothed some more of the clay casing over its chicken-wire frame, muscles rippling with the fluid, effortless movement. Domini watched, her heart full of a nameless longing, too distracted by his powerful attraction to give more than cursory attention to the life-size and still formless sculpture he was starting.

'What is it going to be?' she asked at last, her eyes turning to the crude preliminary outline that might conceivably turn into a reclining woman once the clay had been built up.

'You.'

'But ...'

'My hands have some memory of their own,' he said. 'It may not be quite the same thing my eyes would see, in fact I'm sure it's not. But it helps. I also thought that what I forgot, I could always call to mind by feeling the small maquettes. I spent some days regretting that I'd scared you away, because nothing really replaces having a live model. The flow of flesh changes when a person changes position. I shouldn't have told you so bluntly to get out.'

'Is that an apology?'

'Of sorts.' He ran his hands once more over the surfaces of his armature and then, satisfied, picked up an old wet towel to wipe the worst of the clay mixture from his hands. He turned to face Domini, his expression carefully guarded, the unseeing eyes darker today, the flesh around them scored with the cruel marks of sleeplessness. 'Will you model for me again? I'm obsessed with the need to do this, and I do need a model very badly. Not just any model. I need you.'

'You said something as I was leaving last time,' Domini reminded him. 'Are you telling me you take it back?'

The bitter lines in his face deepened. 'Shall I tell lies in order to get what I want? Perhaps I should, but I won't. I take back no threats, and I make no promises. You understood what I said, and you made your decision by returning. Now take off your clothes and climb on the platform at once. I don't intend to start on the actual modelling of the clay right now, but I want to see if I have the rough dimensions right before I stop for the day.'

It was a moment for decision, a split second when Domini's head should have been in control. But, as if her rational powers had been suspended by Sander's absolute and unquestioning expectation that she could not fail to consent, she walked automatically to the chair where she always left her clothes and started to remove them. As she unzipped her skirt, unbuttoned her blouse, unsheathed her silk-clad legs, it was as though she had no choice ... as though Sander's harsh imperative ruled, and not her own common sense.

Today his impatience was marked; his scowl suggested that he thought Domini was taking too long to disrobe. The terry robe was where she had left it some days before. She threw it over her shoulders without putting it on and went to the platform immediately.

'You won't need this for now,' he said roughly as his hand came into contact with the garment. He whisked the robe away before she eased on to her perch, feeling as vulnerable as she had on the very first day. But his hands remained those of a sculptor, not a lover, as they ranged over her body, quickly adjusting the curve of her thigh, the languid bend of her knee, the curl of a hand resting open-palmed beside her cheek, the head slightly turned to one side. For once there was nothing difficult about the pose: it was the sensuous posture of a reclining woman, as Domini had guessed.

Sander spent some moments moving back and forth between Domini and the armature, feeling measurements to ascertain that his proportions were indeed correct. Because today she was not occupied in holding some stressful position, she was more than ever aware of the rough texture of his fingers as they roamed lightly over this intimate part or that. And she knew that her body's quick responses must be detectable to Sander too.

At last he shrouded the sculpture with large damp cloths and a plastic sheet. Between sessions it would remain protected to prevent drying; the moistness in the clay would have to be maintained until the sculpture was cast. Then he relaxed and came to sit on the edge of the platform, once more using the damp towel to wipe the clay mixture from his hands. 'Don't move yet,' he said. 'I want you to understand this pose you're doing, because mood is very important in sculpture, and what I feel in your face is what will go into the finished work. Have you any idea what your pose is supposed to express?'

'Not really,' Domini said, although she thought she knew.

'You're not sleeping,' he said, his voice low and murmurous, the quality of it more lulling than at any time in Domini's memory. 'And no, you haven't just made love. If either of those were the conditions, I'd have loosened your hair. You're waiting for your lover, Domini. And that's what I want to feel in your face. The invitation in the lips, the tremulous expectancy. I'll want you to pretend you're watching him undress, waiting for him to come across the room. The feeling should be languorous, expectant, the ardour smouldering just below the surface ... do I have to tell you more? You're not an innocent. You must know what it's like, that breathless moment before the lovemaking begins.'

Domini licked her lips. It was as if he was making love to her with his voice, wooing her in a way she was helpless to resist. Even had she wanted to, she could not have broken the magnetic tension in the air; he exerted his domination without touching her at all.

'Try for the mood,' he commanded softly and reached his fingertips forward to Domini's face. Her moistened lips greeted his touch. Unsmilingly, with a sensual expression on his face, he ran a finger around the curve of them, spreading the moisture to each edge. He tested the polished surface of her teeth, felt the soft indentation of her upper lip, ran a finger into the little valley above her chin.

'Part your lips a little more,' he commanded in a voice so husky that its vibrations seemed to echo in Domini's core. Drugged with longing, she obeyed, believing it was only a prelude to the moment when his lips would descend. Waiting and wanting, she gazed at the hooded dark eyes, the sensuous, arrogant curve of his mouth, the bend of his head as he leaned over the place where she lay. On his strongly sculpted face the stamp of pride and bitterness had been replaced by a slumbrous passion, a dark burning of desire.