The Questing Heart (20 page)

'I think it is, if only to get you out of that office and that slum where you live.'

'Of course, you've seen it. But I'm used to it. It's my background, Chris, and I'm not ashamed of it.'

'Why should you be? You do it credit. I'm not a snob, darling, only I feel you deserve better things. I want to give them to you, but you won't accept them unless I marry you.'

She laughed a little tremulously. 'I've always known you were recklessly generous, but that's the weirdest reason for getting wed I've ever heard.' She began to fidget with her teaspoon. 'Have you heard from Signora Albanesi?'

'Not recently.'

'Then she's stopped pursuing you?'

'I really couldn't say. Vio's unpredictable.' He looked at Clare mischievously. 'She may turn up at any moment, especially if she reads my notices. She collects celebrities.'

Clare sighed. She was perfectly certain that Christopher was capable of dealing with the Italian woman, and wondered why she had ever been so credulous as to believe he was not, but she had not really; she had been overcome by his persistence and her desire to keep in touch with him, and now as then, she was puzzled by his attitude. That he could really feel any responsibility towards her was right out of character. True, he had been instrumental in terminating her position with Mrs Cullingford, and her work with
him
ironically had been ended by this absurd engagement, but she was in no need of his help—she was in perfect health, good employment and not a breath of scandal had followed her from Italy. She had no desire for luxuries, though she could see that her home would compare unfavourably with her quarters at the
castello
in his eyes, but he did not have to marry her to get her out of it. Perhaps her surmise about Valerie was right, the lady was being coy, and he was continuing with his engagement to her to show her he did not care. That was much more like Chris. She said inconsequently:

'She's very lovely, the girl who played Thalia.'

His face lit up. 'Valerie Hall? She's a charming person. Still quite unspoilt—reminds me a little of you.'

'Me?' she gasped incredulously.

'She can be incredibly naive upon occasion, a sweet innocent.'

'Oh, really!' Clare thought she had become quite sophisticated since her sojourn in Italy, and to be called naive and innocent needled her. 'We don't look the least alike.'

'No, darling, only very superficially, but then you're unique.'

'Oh, don't tease me,' she cried fretfully.

'I mean it. I've never met anyone else quite like you.'

She said nothing; possibly he had not. Though she was sure she was nothing extraordinary she was not the sort of girl he would encounter in his profession.

He continued to regard her quizzically, then in a different tone, almost serious, he went on:

'The play should have a good run, judging by its reception last night and the notices ... have you seen any, by the way?'

Clare shook her head. It had not occurred to her to look for them. Her family took a picture paper and Alf Underwood read the sports news assiduously every night. She rarely glanced at it, keeping abreast of current news on the television.

'You'll need educating as a playwright's wife,' Chris told her. 'Don't you know how we grab the papers after a first night, disagree with everything the critics say, swear we'll never read another review, and rush for them just the same next time? But to continue with what I was saying, we open in London the week after next. I'd like you to be there.' He looked at her questioningly, but she did not speak. A desperate resolve was forming in her mind. The theatre world with its artificial values and glamour was foreign country to her, she could never belong to it.

'There'll be a break at Christmas,' he went on. 'The theatre is booked for pantomime, but if the box office warrants it, we'll transfer to another one. That would be a good time to get married, give us a few days to ourselves. Agreeable?'

'No.' She pulled his ring from her finger and stood up. 'I can't go on with this ... this farce, Chris. If you want for some obscure reason a stand-in for a wife, get someone else. Perhaps Valerie Hall would oblige, but I'm finished.'

She turned, intending to run out of the cafe, but he caught her wrist in a grip of steel.

'Sit down,' he said more forcibly than she had ever heard him speak. 'I've enough drama on the stage without presenting a free performance for the benefit of the man in the street. Pick up your ring and tell me sensibly what's upset you.'

Clare became aware that her hasty action had been noticed by the occupants of adjacent tables, some of whom were grinning broadly. Blushing fierily, she sat down meekly, rubbing her wrist which turned scarlet where Chris had held it, but she did not pick up the ring. It lay between them like the gage thrown down by two adversaries in a duel. For once there was no laughter in Christopher's eyes, they were hard as topaz and his mouth was set in a grim line.

'Well?' the syllable cut like a lash.

'I haven't seen you for six weeks ...' she began.

'I'm sorry, I should have tried to visit you, but you know ... no, of course you don't know what it's like when a play is being rushed into production and one has not only written it but is playing the chief part.'

'I wasn't reproaching you,' she said quickly. 'What I'm trying to say is, I haven't seen you for six weeks and you're , like a stranger. Last night I saw Cedric Radford—he's the real you, isn't he? A man I don't know at all.'

'Don't be absurd. The part I played is merely a creation of my imagination. You might as well say the heroine of your
Perfidious Passion
is like you—your real self.'

'She's developing quite like me, and you haven't any idea of what my book's about. That's just it, Chris, we're complete strangers and we live in different worlds.'

'We won't be when we live together. We got on very well at the
castello.''

'I was your secretary,' she pointed out.

'Did I treat you like an employee?'

'The circumstances were unusual.'

'You're hedging. Will you please tell me why you've suddenly turned against me?'

There was an angry glitter in his amber eyes, he looked menacing, and Clare remembered how when first she had seen him she had likened him to a tiger. But his accusation hurt her.

'Oh, I haven't turned against you,' she cried in distress. 'But I can't face a bogus marriage.'

'Need it be bogus, as you call it?'

She stared at him. What new development was this? Christopher taking marriage seriously? He who had always derided matrimonial bliss and said he hated domesticity? Who had fled from the gorgeous Violetta, who, if he wanted a wife, a real wife, could have picked someone like the lovely Valerie Hall?

Christopher met her gaze with bland assurance, concealing a repressed eagerness. Clare knew how he disliked opposition and it occurred to her that because she was stalling he was determined to overrule her even to the extent of pretending an emotion he did not feel. That was his job, wasn't it? Expressing artificial emotions that belonged to fictitious characters? When he had wanted to take her from Mrs Cullingford he had resorted to a somewhat questionable subterfuge, he had claimed her as his fiancee to frustrate Violetta. She could only guess at some devious purpose this marriage was to fulfil, but she would submit to no more pretence. Better to end their association while her integrity was still intact so that she could remould her life without his disturbing presence in the background.

'I don't know what you're getting at now, Chris,' she told him with forced lightness. 'You're always too subtle for me, but I did tell you you were the last man I'd ever think of marrying. For a permanent partner I'd require someone a little more stable. I've played along with you because I felt somewhat in your debt, but I've gone far enough. We'll end it here and now.'

He dropped his gaze from hers and in the short silence that followed she felt as if she had received a mortal wound, but she knew she had done the only possible thing. He was so used to dramatic situations in plays, he carried them over into his real life. As she had told him once, love and marriage were to her sacred things and she would mock them no more with false pretences.

'Is that what you really want?' he asked at length.

It was not, but what she really wanted was impossible of attainment. Christopher had never indicated that he could possibly love her.

'Yes,' she said firmly.

'Then so be it.' He flashed her an impish smile. 'I'll have to stand on my own feet from now on, won't I! No busy little Sparrow fluttering round to point out my sins of omission and commission. I didn't believe you could be so hard-hearted, darling, but you're wise. Actors make unsatisfactory partners.'

This was the Chris she knew, flippant, bantering, never serious.

'Oh, you'll manage very well without me,' she returned. 'You did before you met me.'

'I often wonder how I did.'

'You've been on your own for the past six weeks.'

'So I have. Don't worry, darling, nobody is indispensable.' He picked up the ring. 'You'd better wear this a little longer or those office morons will peck you to death.'

Clare was about to refuse, she wanted to be done with the whole miserable affair, but he was putting it back on her finger and she knew she would have to face a storm of questions upon her return to the office, it would be worse still if she had to admit that her engagement had ceased as soon as her fiancee appeared.

'I daresay you can think up a face-saver later on,' he went on lightly. 'But keep the ring even if you don't wear it, as I said before, I'd like you to have it as a memento of our adventures together.' He was such an odd mixture of thoughtfulness and selfishness.

'I owe you some salary, I believe,' he continued. 'I'll arrange for a cheque to be sent to you. Sorry I've been so dilatory, but you weren't around to remind me of my obligations.'

She could not speak. She threw him one agonised glance and walked blindly out of the cafe, while he waited to pay for the coffee. She walked not noticing where she was going, through St Anne's Square, Albert Square, along Piccadilly instinctively avoiding the traffic she did not see. Nobody noticed her, an ordinary-looking girl apparently bent upon some unimportant errand. The only things she did see were the posters advertising
Olympian Intrusion,
some of which showed Cedric Radford's pictured face. By her own act she had deliberately alienated Christopher for ever, and she would never see him in the flesh again, except possibly upon a stage. But that would not be Chris, it would be Cedric Radford, who represented the great division that lay between them.

C
LARE
returned to her office late, but nobody reprimanded her, and mercifully there was no time to talk. She knew from the covert glances she received from the whole staff —the office employed four clerical workers, a manager and three salesmen—that they had all been informed that she was a well-known actor's fiancee, and not one of them would have believed it if he had not told them so himself. Not that Christopher had the same rating as a pop singer in their estimation, but he was actually appearing in Manchester and was on view, so to speak, to anyone who cared to pay for a seat to see him. They thought she was late back because Chris had taken her out to lunch, and she, who had had no lunch at all, did not undeceive them. When she said she was staying on late to finish her neglected work, the junior gaped.

'Aren't you going out with lover-boy?'

Clare said steadily, inwardly wincing, 'You forget actors work in the evening.'

'My, I shouldn't like that,' the junior exclaimed, reversing her opinion of the desirability of actors. 'You mean you can't go dancing, nor nothing?'

'Exactly.'

Clare had forgotten that Chris- had been to Newton Heath, until upon her arrival home her mother said:

'Well, did your fancy man find you in the end? Gave me a shock, he did and all. I thought he was the man to read the meter, and there was me, still with me curlers in and a dirty apron,'

'It didn't matter.'

Had circumstances been otherwise, it would have done, for Chris, fastidious himself, detested slovenliness, but now, as she had said, it did not matter if her mother had given a bad impression. She had never been very close to her. Annie Underwood was a querulous woman with a grouch against life, who had resented her daughter's efforts to better herself, and she had never quite forgiven her for going abroad. Her father was different, and he saw immediately he came in and noticed her white strained face that something was very wrong. He said nothing while they ate their meal, and Annie was present, but as soon as she had cleared away and gone to the kitchen after grumbling at Clare for pecking at her food, he demanded:

'What's up, lass?'

Clare could fend off her mother, but she could not mislead her father, so she told him briefly that her engagement was off.

'We found we weren't suited.'

'You mean he gave you the push?' Alf began to bristle. 'By gum, lass, if he's hurt you, I'll give him what for if he were the Prince of Wales himself!'

Clare laughed shakily, finding his championship balm to her sore heart.

'No, Dad, it's nothing like that. Actually it was I who broke it off. You know you've always feared I wouldn't fit into his life, and now I've realised it. But I'm very fond of him ...' Her voice broke.

'Look, lass, if he's done wrong ...'

'No, no, Dad ... Oh, I can't explain, it's all so complicated.'

How could her father ever understand the sequence of events that had led up to the forming and breaking of her engagement? It would mean telling him about Signora Albanesi, the
castello
and her journey across France, and though she would have liked to confide the whole story to him, she did not think she could make it sound anything but crazy. He had not noticed that she was still wearing her ring and she surreptitiously changed it to her other hand. She decided then that she must look for another job.