The Older Man (19 page)

Grant, when she saw him at breakfast, didn’t look a whole lot better. At least she had concealed some of the ravages with makeup, a remedy not available to him. When she offered to take the children for a swim he didn’t suggest coming with them.

By lunchtime she was feeling better; her headache was gone, and the sun had warmed her skin. She managed to get through the meal without looking once at Grant.

Afterwards he said, “This is our last day. I thought I’d go for a drive this afternoon, see some of the other bays, perhaps. Mother doesn’t want to come, but I’ll take the children, Rennie, and you can stay here or come with us as you like.”

“I’ll stay,” she said hurriedly. “Thank you.” In the car she’d have no chance of avoiding him, even with the children there as a buffer.

After checking that Mrs Morrison didn’t want anything, she went for a long scramble round the rocks, followed by a swim, and then settled on the beach with a book. It wasn’t until a long shadow fell across the page that she realised Grant was standing by, watching her.

“Oh, I didn’t know you were back!” She looked at her watch and began to scramble to her feet.

“No hurry,” he said. “The children sent me to fetch you,” he added dryly. “They have a surprise for you.”

“What kind of surprise?” She pulled a wraparound skirt about her waist over the swimsuit she was wearing, and tied it firmly. “Did you tell them it’s my birthday?” she asked suspiciously.

He shrugged. “It might have slipped out.”

“I didn’t mean anyone to know. I told you — “

“You know how children love birthdays. You wouldn’t deprive them of this small pleasure, would you?”

She bent to pick up the book from the grass, as he did the same. He relinquished it and they straightened together, standing close. She stared into his eyes. They were concerned, even worried.

“Rennie,” he said, “I didn’t intend to hurt you.”

She said, “I thought that was just what you did mean to do.”

He stepped back, shaking his head. “Momentarily. But I had no right to take out my bad temper on you.”

Dimly she understood that her presence had been just the catalyst. He’d been drinking, not a lot but enough to skew his judgement and unbalance him from his normal, rational self. And he’d been brooding, over Jean’s death and their failed marriage, over a lot things, perhaps, that Rennie knew nothing about.

“It’s all right,” she said generously. “I know you didn’t mean it.”

Any of it, she thought bleakly. Not only the anger, but the passion had been directed less at her than at the demons from the past that were tormenting him.

Grant nodded. “I hope we can forget last night. It should never have happened.”

“Sure.” She shrugged to hide her hurt. With only the slightest hint of sarcasm, she added, “It’s forgotten.”

Fat chance, she thought. Shooting a glance at his face, she deduced with some satisfaction that he wasn’t going to find forgetting so easy, either.

He soon proved it. As she preceded him across the hot sand, he ran a finger over her shoulders blades. “You’ve burnt a bit,” he said. “Didn’t you use sunscreen?”

“I couldn’t reach there,” she said.

“Where’s Larry today?”

“How should I know? And why should I, anyway?” She quickened her pace but it was difficult in the soft, warm sand.

“You seemed to be getting on last night,” Grant said.

She turned to stare at him. “Getting on?”

“You looked pretty close to me.”

In the shade of one of the pohutukawas that overhung the beach where it met the grass she stopped short. “I’m not close to every man who casually puts an arm around me!”

“How many are there?”

Rennie blinked. He was jealous, she thought blankly, then with a sense of triumph. Jealous! The realisation was so heady that she smiled. “Dog in the manger, Grant?” she challenged him.

He moved forward so suddenly that she backed into the rough tree trunk behind her, gasping at the impact. Grant stopped abruptly, and she saw a quick flood of colour come into his face. “Don’t push me, Rennie,” he said. “You already know where that can lead.”

“You started it!” she accused him quickly, breathlessly.

His lips clamped. She saw him making an effort at control. “You’re right,” he said colourlessly. “I was out of line.” He reached out to take her arm in a hard grip. “Come on. They’re waiting for us.”

The children were with their grandmother at the table, and the minute she walked in they started singing “Happy Birthday.” They had bought sweets and ice cream and pink wafer biscuits, and a cake with yellow icing on which the children had stuck candles. “I wanted to make you a birthday cake,” Ellen confided, “but Daddy said we didn’t have ‘gredients, and besides it wouldn’t be a surprise, then.”

“I’m sure you’d have made me a lovely birthday cake,” Rennie said, “but this one looks delicious.”

She had to blow out the candles, and then Ellen and Toby presented her with a huge box of chocolates. “Daddy said it’s from all of us,” Toby said. “And you don’t have to share.”

“I couldn’t possibly eat them all myself. I hope you’ll help me.”

“If you like,” Toby said, trying to sound offhand. “I like the ones with the gold paper on.”

“You should have told us it was your birthday, dear,” Mrs Morrison admonished. “How do your parents feel about your spending it away from them?”

“I already told them I don’t want a party,” Rennie said. “And we’ll have a special dinner one night after I get back.”

“Grant says you’re twenty. You don’t look it. He thought you were a year younger.”

“A year’s neither here nor there at her age,” Grant commented.

“It means I’m not a teenager,” Rennie reminded him.

“That’s just the age when it does seem to make a great difference,” his mother said. “Heavens, I was married at twenty.”

“Were you?” Rennie asked, and shot a glance at Grant.

“My husband, of course, was much older.”

“Really?” Rennie felt slightly breathless. “How much?”

Mrs Morrison gave her a frosty look. “A number of years,” she said. “The children are waiting for you to cut your cake.”

The next day, Grant dropped off his mother first, then headed for Rennie’s home.

“I can go home with you, if you like,” she offered without much hope.

“That won’t be necessary. I’m sure that the children and I can manage on our own tonight. I have to work tomorrow, though. Can you be there by eight o’clock?”

“Yes, of course. I’ll see you in the morning, then.” She was afraid that he would tell her she needn’t stay at nights any more, but he said nothing about it.

He began sending her home every weekend, though she stayed during the week. She was sure he was avoiding being alone with her as much as possible, and felt an odd mixture of exasperation at his scruples and a tingling excitement that he evidently found her so hard to resist. Most nights he said he had work to do after the children were settled, and sat at the kitchen table with a pile of papers. Once she went in to make herself a drink, and found him staring into space.

“Coffee?” she asked.

He looked at her as though he hadn’t heard, and she repeated the question.

“Yes, I’d like one.” He pushed the papers to one side and sat back, rubbing the nape of his neck with one hand, and watched her absently as she prepared the coffee.

“Thanks,” he said, as she handed the cup to him.

She hesitated, and he said, “Sit down.”

“Do you have a problem?”

“Problem?”

She indicated the piles of papers.

“Oh, that! Nothing I can’t handle there.” He was staring into his cup.

“Well, then?”

He looked at her. “I have to get another carer for the children,” he said. “Before you go back to university.”

Impulsively she said, “Supposing I don’t — “

Sharply, he said, “What do you mean?”

“Would you like me to stay on?”

He put down his cup so hard that it splashed a few drops of coffee onto the typewritten pages on the table. “No, I would not!”

Hurt at his vehemence, she said, “The children have got used to me — “

“And they can get used to someone else. You are going back to university to finish your degree. And that’s final.”

“You can’t dictate what I do!” she protested.

“I never heard such a crazy idea! Three years of work and you’re going to throw it in just like that! You can’t give up now!”

“Surely I should the judge of that?”

“On what grounds do you base that statement?” he asked her sarcastically.

Mulishly she said, “It’s my life — “

“Yes, and you’re about to ruin it — “

” — and it’s my choice, not yours!”

“It’s my choice that I don’t want you looking after my children after the start of term. Your job ends right then. Understood?”

Rennie swallowed. “Understood.”

Softening a little, he said, “I didn’t mean to snarl, Rennie, but believe me, I know what I’m talking about.”

“Because of your age, and experience, I suppose,” Rennie said.

“You could say that.”

“And I know what I feel!” Rennie said, a clenched fist at her chest.

“Yes,” Grant said. “That’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

His face was pale, his expression strained. He’d been overworking, she thought. “When did you decide to chuck it in?” he demanded. “Four weeks ago? Six? Two?”

Rennie shrugged. “What difference does it make?” She hadn’t decided anything, just thought that if the children — and Grant — needed her she could give at least think about giving them a year or so from her life. She’d expected a discussion, not a sudden flare-up from Grant.

“I should never have kissed you that night,” he said flatly.

“Which night?”

He made an impatient gesture. “The night I took you out to dinner. And proved to my own satisfaction that you weren’t, after all, infatuated with Ethan. It never occurred to me that I ran the risk you’d — “

“I’d what? Become infatuated with you, instead?” Rennie stood up, trembling. “That’s what you think, isn’t it? That I have an adolescent crush on you!”

Grant leaned back in his chair, his eyes hard and his face expressionless. “Can you deny it?”

“Yes!” Rennie said fiercely. She knew that the emotions she felt now had nothing to do with the romantic fantasising she had indulged in at puberty. This was something different. But she could see there was no hope of convincing him. “I deny it,” she said. “Absolutely.”

He was smiling, a faint, disbelieving smile. Rennie, goaded beyond bearing, said, “And what about you? You can’t tell me you feel nothing for me!”

“No, I won’t try,” he said. “I don’t deny your sexual attraction for me. Particularly since you’ve made it plain that it’s mutual. That’s a powerful aphrodisiac, and very flattering. But I’m not about to lose my head over a lovely adolescent, even one well over the age of consent and legally adult. Frankly, it could lead to more trouble than it’s worth.”

Rennie whitened. He spoke so coolly, as though delivering a legal opinion. She couldn’t remember when her confidence in herself had been so shaken. She felt small and insignificant, and very, very young.

Grant removed his eyes from her stricken face, and shuffled the papers before him, shoving his half empty coffee cup into the middle of the table. “And now, if you’ll excuse me,” he said in the same tone, “I really have a lot of work to get through.”

Rennie walked into the other room and realised she was holding an empty cup. She felt as though she’d been flattened by a steam-roller, her mind a blank. After a while, when it began to function again, she was shaken by the realisation that it was three more weeks to the end of the holidays. And she didn’t know how on earth she was going to get through them.

Survive she did, somehow. It was made easier by her continuing anger with Grant, and his own distant manner. Also the frequent excuses he made for going out after the children were in bed. Work, she assumed.

But one night when she was about to go to bed, he came in and was not alone. The woman he introduced as Lorna Fielding, a colleague from his office, would have been in her early thirties, Rennie guessed, and very attractive. She wore a white shirt, slim black skirt and very high heels with black stockings, and her blonde hair was sleekly shining, falling against her jawline. She greeted Rennie pleasantly and seemed politely regretful when Rennie said she was going to bed. But long after turning out the light, Rennie could hear her voice and Grant’s in the lounge, with occasional bursts of laughter. Then there was a long silence broken only by music which she eventually identified as an Etude by Scriabin which she didn’t recall seeing in his collection. Apparently this wasn’t a business meeting. Eventually she pulled a pillow over her head and went to sleep.

Over breakfast she said casually, “I didn’t know you owned Scriabin’s Etude in D-sharp Minor.”

“You know it?” Grant looked up from his coffee in surprise.

“I’m not a total bimbo, you know,” Rennie told him with a hint of sharpness. “I listen to all kinds of music. Actually that’s one of my favourite pieces.”

“Feel free to play it,” he said. “There are other pieces of his on the tape. I only got it yesterday.”

And had brought Lorna Fielding home to share it with him. Or had she given it to him?

Inexplicably hurt, Rennie asked, “It wasn’t your birthday, was it?”

“No.” He looked blank. “I have to go.”

He got up and bent to kiss the children as usual. Ellen said, “Why don’t you kiss Rennie, Daddy?”

She cast him a mocking look, and with a faint glint in his eye he approached her and bent to brush his lips impersonally against her cheek.

The next evening, while the children were in the bath, Grant answered the telephone and called, “Rennie! It’s Larry Townsend, for you.”

“How did he know this number?” she wondered, taking the receiver from him.

“I gave his father my card. He had a small legal problem and asked if he could look me up after the holidays.”

“I’ve got two tickets for Alice and the Amaranthas for tomorrow night,” Larry told her. “Thought you might like to come to the concert with me.”