The Touch (32 page)

The ride back to the house got itself done—how, she never afterward knew. Her eyes, her mind, her very soul were possessed by the memory of that beautiful, wonderful body that had no flaw, its muscles liquid beneath the smooth skin, the face rapt, frozen in perfect pleasure. All her life she had yearned for freedom, but had never encountered it personified in a human being until now, and it was unforgettable. A revelation.

Lee Costevan was home.

RUBY APPEARED not long after Elizabeth had bathed and changed into an afternoon dress.

“Lee’s home!” she cried, face transfigured. “Oh, Elizabeth, Lee’s home! I didn’t expect it, I had no idea!”

“How wonderful,” said Elizabeth automatically, forming the words as if they were wool in her mouth. “Some tea, Mrs. Surtees.”

She ushered a fizzing, exalted Ruby to the conservatory and persuaded her to sit in a chair for more than a second at a time, finding it easier now to smile. “Ruby, dear, calm down. I want to hear all about it at once, but you’re in no fit state to talk.”

“He just appeared off the Lithgow train last night, out of the blue—I wondered why it ran so late, but of course it waited for him to make the connection off the slow train from Sydney. I was in the lounge with the C of E bishop and his wife—he’s visiting the parish,” babbled Ruby.

“I know he is. He’s coming here to dinner tonight, don’t you remember? Now you can come with Lee.”

“And in walked Lee! Oh, Elizabeth, my jade kitten is a man! So handsome! So tall! And you should hear him speak—vowels as round as the toffiest toff in England!” She brushed away tears, smiled ecstatically. “Bishop Kestwick positively fell all over himself the moment he heard Lee speak, and when he realized that this was my son—oh, I soared in his estimation!”

“I didn’t know that was an ambition of yours,” Elizabeth said, willing her heart to stop beating so fast.

“Well, it isn’t, and the old boy is very confused about my place in the Kinross scheme of things, but he knows better than to treat me like a scarlet woman when I’m on the Apocalypse board and a potential donor to the church. Anyway, once he set eyes on Lee he decided that I was very wronged—my son had gone to none other than Proctor’s. Oh, Elizabeth, I’m so happy!”

“A blind man could see that, darling Ruby.” Elizabeth wet her lips. “Does this mean that Alexander is coming home? Is he in Sydney and arriving later?”

Some of Ruby’s animation died as she saw the expression in Elizabeth’s eyes, the way her face had donned its old mask. “No, sweetie-pie, Alexander stayed in England. He sent Lee home for the English summer because that’s Alexander—his letter says that he couldn’t contemplate my going another three and more years without setting eyes on my jade kitten. Lee is home until the end of July, when he sails again.”

The tea arrived; Elizabeth poured. “So what are you doing here, Ruby? Why aren’t you spending every moment with Lee?”

“Oh, Lee’s joining us here,” said Ruby, who looked a mere twenty-five years old, glowing with youth. “You don’t think that I’d wait until dinner time to introduce you to my son, do you? He set off to explore Kinross, and promised that he’d turn up in time for tea.” She mock-frowned. “The wretch! He’s late.”

“We’ll make more tea when he comes.”

That was half an hour later, by which time Elizabeth had composed herself. A little surprised, she had discovered a small twinge of regret when Ruby said Alexander wasn’t coming home; Nell at least would have been delirious to see him. Though she could understand why Ruby wasn’t very perturbed; it would be awkward to juggle a son and a lover who were the best of friends, keep the knowledge of what Alexander was to her from Lee.

Who walked into the conservatory with his hair braided into its pigtail, clad in a pair of old but clean dungarees and an open-necked cotton shirt with its sleeves rolled up. Not realizing that her face froze immediately into an expression of cool remoteness, Elizabeth rose to her feet and extended one hand to the young man with an aloof smile on her lips and no smile in her eyes. Ruby was right, he was handsome, strikingly so; a look of Sung as well as of his mother, Sung in the sharply delineated features and patrician air, Ruby in the grace of movement and the spontaneous charm. But his eyes were all his own, their light green irises surrounded by much darker green rings that gave his regard a piercing quality. Yes, pale eyes set in black lashes and bronze skin were unsettling, fascinatingly incongruous.

“How do you do, Lee?” Elizabeth asked, voice colorless.

His delight in the day waned, his head went slightly to one side as those eyes inspected her with a touch of bewilderment.

“I’m very well, Mrs. Kinross,” he said, shaking her limp hand. “And you?”

“Very well, thank you. Please call me Elizabeth. Do sit down. Mrs. Surtees will bring fresh tea shortly.”

He sat where he could see both women and let his mother do the talking. So this was Alexander’s wife, of whom Alexander hardly ever spoke. No wonder, Lee reflected. She wasn’t a warm or womanly woman, though an arctic composure suited her style. Quite the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, with that milk-white skin, black hair and very dark blue eyes. A lush mouth disciplined into a firmness alien to its natural contours, a long and graceful neck, and lovely hands on whose third fingers those massive rings looked out of place. Elizabeth Kinross wasn’t a splashy person, but of course Alexander would have given her the rings, and he was definitely a splashy person. I wish he had come with me, Lee thought. I miss him, and I suspect that in his absence I am missing the essence of Kinross. His wife doesn’t want me here.

“How is Alexander?” she asked when she could get a word in.

“Thriving,” said Lee with a grin that displayed Ruby’s dimples. “He’s with the Siemens Brothers in Germany for the summer.”

“Looking at engines and machines.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know if he’s been to Kinross in Scotland?”

Lee looked surprised, his mouth open to say that surely Alexander wrote of such things, then he closed it; when he did answer the question, it was directly. “No, Elizabeth, he hasn’t.”

“I imagined that. Have you spent much time with him?”

“Every moment that Proctor’s granted me.”

“So you like him.”

“He’s more a father to me than Sung, though I don’t say that with bitterness or mean to imply a criticism. I love and respect my blood father, but I am not Chinese,” said Lee stiffly.

Ruby was looking from one to the other with dismay—this was not how she had imagined the meeting of her most beloved son and her most cherished friend! They weren’t making a connection—worse, Elizabeth was radiating dislike. The ice was back with a vengeance. Elizabeth, don’t do this to me! Don’t reject my jade kitten! She jumped up, put on her hat.

“Oops, it’s late. Up with you, Lee, while there’s still a sandwich left on the plate. Bishop Kestwick is coming to dinner here tonight, so you and I will be returning with the episcopal couple at half past seven.”

“I look forward to it,” said Elizabeth woodenly.

“WHAT DID you think of Alexander’s wife?” Ruby asked her son as they traveled down to Kinross in the cable car.

Lee didn’t answer for a moment, then turned his head to look into his mother’s eyes. “Alexander has never discussed her with me, Mum, but meeting her has made me understand why you’re still his mistress.”

Her breath caught. “So you know that.”

“He made no secret of it because he knew that sooner or later I’d find out. That’s what he said when he told me. We had a long talk about you, and I loved him for it. He spoke of you with such deep affection, said that you were the light of his life. But he didn’t bring Elizabeth into it, or explain why he was still with you, except to say that he couldn’t live without you.”

“Nor I without him. I gather you don’t disapprove?”

“Of course I don’t, Mum.” He smiled at the town, drawing closer. “It’s his and your business, not mine, and it doesn’t affect you and me, does it? Except that I’m so enormously pleased to think that my mother and my self-chosen father are in love.”

“Ta, my jade kitten,” she said huskily, squeezing his hand. “You’re so like your self-chosen father in many ways—you both have a practical streak a mile wide, and that in turn gives you the detachment to accept the things that can’t be changed.”

“Like you and Alexander.”

“Like me and Alexander.”

They got out of the car and walked between the huge corrugated iron sheds that housed the Apocalypse activities, emerged on to the streets of Kinross.

“Did you explore the ore plant, the gasworks, the retorts and all the rest this afternoon?” she asked as they crossed the grass of Kinross Square.

“No, I went bush, Mum. Europe is full of factories, but it has no bush. That was what I wanted first—the sight of our own animals running wild, the smell of eucalyptus, birds that have all the colors of the rainbow in their plumage. European birds are rather dismal, though the nightingale has a beautiful song.”

“And you didn’t see Elizabeth?”

“No. Should I have?”

“Not really, except that today was a riding day, and she always goes bush.”

“A riding day?”

“Some days of the week she relieves Jade in the nursery to look after Anna. I presume you know about Anna?”

“Oh, yes.”

They entered the foyer of the hotel. “You’re bound to meet Nell this evening—Elizabeth lets her stay up long enough to see the dinner guests.” Ruby smiled wryly. “I think that’s her way of demonstrating that one of her children is very clever, even if the other is mental.”

“Poor Elizabeth,” he said. “Formal evening dress, Mum?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Will Sung be there? I feel a little guilty at going bush instead of paying my respects to him in that amazing pagoda city on top of the hill.”

“You can do that tomorrow, Lee. His pagoda city is amazing, isn’t it? But Sung won’t be at Kinross House tonight—he’s a heathen Chinee. The guests all have something to do with the C of E in Kinross.” She giggled. “Except for the Costevans! We are not Chinese, but we are definitely heathens.”

“Very wealthy heathens!” came his voice as he disappeared down the corridor to his room.

There are no flies on you, Lee, for all the years you’ve been away, thought Ruby, fancying that the air still contained some of his essence. He flattened me, she thought; I didn’t know how big he was, how strange a mixture of Sung and me he’d be. Lee, my Lee!

AFTER A VISIT to the nursery Elizabeth went to her rooms and sat looking out a window. But she didn’t see the vista of forest and mountain; her vision was inward, and occupied by Lee Costevan at The Pool, an image of beauty, masculinity, utter freedom. I have been visiting The Pool for years, yet never once did it occur to me to strip off my clothes and frolic amid the fish, a fish myself. Not all of The Pool is deep, I might have kept to the shallow end. I could have known what he knew today. Oh, Elizabeth, be honest with yourself! You didn’t because you couldn’t. You’re not free to frolic, even on the days when you can ride Crystal. You’re tied to a husband you can’t love and two children you do love but can’t like, and that weighs you down like an ingot of lead. So get on with your life, and go away, Lee Costevan!

Even so, she took particular care that evening to choose a dress—pale navy-blue taffeta, its bustle trimmed with chiffon frills that were repeated at her bosom and formed small sleeves just below her white shoulders. She shaved the hair in her armpits these days, a trick she had learned from Ruby, who deplored those women who, she said, “Lift an arm in their daring gown and display a thick bush that destroys their attractiveness completely. Pearl can use a razor, have her keep your armpits shaven, Elizabeth. It permits the sweat to get away, you’ll smell sweeter.”

“What about the downstairs department?” she had asked with a wicked smile.

“I don’t shave it because it itches dreadfully growing back, but I do trim it with a pair of scissors,” said Ruby, unabashed. “Who wants a sticky beard down there?” She giggled. “Unless it’s a man’s sticky beard.”

“Ruby!”

At least, she thought, I am educated in such matters thanks to Ruby. There. The sapphire and diamond suite looked very well with this dress—hair ornament, earrings, necklace and two wide bracelets. She hadn’t done her hair in the customary puffs and rolls, but swept it back into a braided bun atop her head. No need to be ashamed of her ears or her neck, so why dwarf her face with a bouffant hair style? A touch of jasmine perfume, and she was ready to face the Kinross Church of England.

Who, of course, felt utterly eclipsed by the two most important women in the district, if not in all of New South Wales.

“You must forgive the lack of a host, your lordship,” said Elizabeth to the Bishop, “but I feel that this first visit to our little township should include dinner at Kinross House.”

“Of course, of course,” burbled the Bishop, staggered by so much beauty displayed with so much elegance and refinement.

“Lee, you are welcome,” she said then to Ruby’s son, looking as if he didn’t know what dungarees and a limp cotton shirt were. His evening dress had been tailored in Savile Row, his tie a big affair in silk brocade, just as the latest fashion magazines depicted. Haughty was a new word she found for him; yet he radiated charm in Ruby’s manner, and soon had the Bishop wrapped around his finger. The Costevans are shameless.

Elizabeth sat with Bishop Kestwick on her right and the Reverend Peter Wilkins on her left; the other guests were seated down either side of the table, extended to accommodate the eleven diners. Alexander’s place at the other end was vacant. For a moment she had toyed with the idea of putting Lee there, then decided against it—he was, after all, not yet eighteen years of age. A fact that the Bishop chose to comment upon.

“Aren’t you a little young to be drinking wine, sir?”

Lee blinked, flashed the clerical guest a particularly sweet smile. “Jesus,” he said, “was a Jew in a country and at a time when wine was healthier to drink than most water. I imagine that He drank wine after His bar mitzvah conveyed official manhood on Him. That is, after He turned twelve or thereabouts. It would have been watered until His sixteenth birthday—or thereabouts. Wine is God’s gift, my lord. Taken in moderation, naturally. I will not become inebriated, I promise you.”