Wildfire at Midnight (4 page)

He had been here already this summer, then. I frowned down at the book, wondering what on earth he could be doing in Skye. He must, of course, be collecting material for some book; he would hardly have chosen a place like this for a holiday. This Highland fastness, all trout and misty heather and men in shabby tweeds, accorded ill with what I remembered of Nicholas. I picked up the pen, conscious that my hands were not quite steady. All the carefully acquired poise in the world was not going to make it any more possible for me to meet Nicholas Drury again with the casual camaraderie which was, no doubt, fashionable among the divorces of his London circle.

I dipped the pen in the inkstand, hesitated, and finally wrote: Gianetta Brooke, Tench Abbas Rectory, Warwickshire. Then I tugged my wedding ring rather painfully off my finger and dropped it into my bag. I would have to tell Major Persimmon, the hotel proprietor, why Mrs. Drury had suddenly become Miss Brooke: there were, it seemed to me, altogether too many embarrassments contingent on there being a Mr.

and Mrs. Drury in the same hotel. Marcia Maling had already promised to say nothing. And Nicholas was not to know that I had not become Miss Brooke again four years ago. He would probably be as annoyed and uncomfortable as I, when we met, and would surely try to pass off the awkward encounter as easily as possible. So, at any rate, I assured myself, as I blotted and shut the book, though, remembering my handsome and incalculable husband as I did, I felt that there was very little dependence to be placed on the good behavior of Nicholas Drury.

Then I jumped like a nervous cat as a man's voice said behind me: "Janet Drury, as I live!"

I turned quickly, to see a man coming down the stairs towards me.

"Alastair! How nice to see you again! Where've you been all these years?"

Alastair Braine took both my hands and beamed down at me. He was a big, rugged-looking man, with powerful shoulders, perpetually untidy brown hair, and a disarming grin that hid an exceptionally shrewd mind. He looked anything but what he was—one of the coming men in the ruthless world of advertising.

"America mostly, with a dash of Brazil and Pakistan. You knew I was working for the Pergamon people?"

"Yes, I remember. Have you been back long?"

"About six weeks. They gave me a couple of months' leave, so I've come up here with some friends for a spot of fishing."

"It's lovely seeing you again," I said, "and I must say your tan does you credit, Alastair!"

He grinned down at me. "It's a pity I can't return the compliment, Janet, my pet. Not"—he caught himself up hastily—"that it's not lovely to see you, too, but you look a bit Londonish, if I may say so. What's happened to the schoolgirl complexion? Nick been beating you?"

I stared at him, but he appeared to notice nothing odd in my expression. He said, cheerfully: "He never told me you were joining him here, the scurvy devil."

"Oh Lord," I said. "Alastair, don't tell me you didn't know? We got a divorce."

He looked startled, even shocked. "Divorced? When?"

"Over four years ago now. D'you mean to tell me you hadn't heard?"

He shook his head. "Not a word. Of course, I've been abroad all the time, and I'm the world's lousiest letter writer, and Nick's the next worst, so you can see—" He broke off and whistled a little phrase between his teeth. "Ah, well. Sorry, Janet. I—well, perhaps I'm not so very surprised, after all. ... You don't mind my saying that?"

"Don't give it a thought." My voice was light and brittle, and would do credit. I thought, to any of Nicholas's casual London lovelies, "ft was just one of those things that couldn't ever have worked. It was nobody's fault; he just thought I was another kind of person altogether. You see, in my job you tend to look—well, tough and sort of well-varnished, even when you're not."

"And you're not."

"Well. I wasn't then.."" I said. I've a better veneer now."

"Three years of my great friend Nicholas," said Alastair, "would sophisticate a Vestal Virgin. Bad luck, Janet. But, if I may ask, what are you doing here?"

"Having a holiday like you, and dodging the Coronation crowds. I need hardly say I had no idea Nicholas was going to be here. I was a bit run down, and wanted somewhere restful, and I heard of the hotel through some friends of the family."

"Somewhere restful." He gave a little bark of laughter. "Oh my ears and whiskers! And you have to run slap into Nick!"

"Not yet," I told him grimly. "That's a pleasure in store for us both."

"Lord, Lord," said Alastair ruefully, then began to grin again. "Don't look so scared, my child. Nick won't eat you. It's he should be nervous, not you. Look, Janet, will you let me dine at your table tonight? I'm with a couple who could probably do with having to have a little of one another's society."

"I'd love you to," I said gratefully. "But how on earth is it that Nicholas didn't tell you about us?"

"I've really seen very little of him. He's apparently in Skye collecting stuff on folklore and suchlike for a book, and he's been moving from one place to another, with this as a main base. He's out most of the time.

I did ask after you, of course, and he just said: 'She's fine. She's still with Hugo, you know. They've a show due soon.' I thought nothing of it."

"When was this?"

"Oh, when I first got here and found he was staying. May the tenth, or thereabouts."

"We were getting a show ready then, as it happens. But how on earth did he know?"

"Search me," said Alastair cheerily, and then turned to greet the couple who were crossing the hall towards us. The woman was slight, dark, and almost nondescript save for a pair of really beautiful brown eyes, long-lidded and flecked with gold. Her dress was indifferently cut, and was a depressing shade of green.

Her hair had no luster, and her mouth drooped petulantly. The man with her was a startling contrast. He, too, was dark, but his thinness gave the impression of a great wiry strength and vitality. His eyes were blue, dark Irish blue, and he was extraordinarily handsome, though there were lines round the sensitive mouth that spoke of a temper too often given rein.

I said quickly: "The name's Brooke, Alastair, not Drury. Do remember. I thought it might be awkward—"

"I couldn't agree more. Ah"—as they came up—"Hart, Alma, this is Gianetta Brooke. Janet, Mr. and Mrs. Corrigan."

We murmured politely. I saw Mrs. Corrigan eyeing my frock; her husband's blue eyes flicked over me once, with a kind of casual interest, then they sought the lounge door, as if he were waiting for someone else.

"I'm going to desert you at dinner, Alma, if you'll forgive me." Alastair made his excuses. "Miss Brooke and I are old friends, and we've a lot to talk about."

Mrs. Corrigan looked vaguely resentful, and I wondered for a moment if she were going to invite me to join their table, until I realized that she was hesitating between two evils, the hazard of having another woman near her husband, and the loss of the society of her husband's friend. She had, in fact, the air of one for whom life has for a long time been an affair of perpetual small calculations such as this. I felt sorry for her. Through Alastair's pleasant flow of conversational nothings, I shot a glance at Hartley Corrigan, just in time to see the look on his face as the lounge door opened behind me, and Marcia Maling drifted towards us on a cloud of Chanel No. 5. My pity for Alma Corrigan became, suddenly, acute. She seemed to have no defenses. She simply stood there, dowdy, dumb, and patently resentful, while Marcia, including us all in her gay "How were the fish, my dears?" enveloped the whole group in the warm exuberance of her personality.

The whole group, yes—but somehow, I thought, as I watched her, and listened to some absurd fish story she was parodying—somehow she had cut out

Hartley Corrigan from the herd, and penned him as neatly as if she were champion bitch at the sheep trials, and he were a marked wether. And as for the tall Irishman, it was plain that, for all he was conscious of the rest of us, the two of them might as well have been alone.

I found I did not wan! to meet Alma Corrigan's eyes, and looked away. I was wishing the gong would go.

The hall was full of people now: all the members of Marcia's list seemed to be assembled. There were the Cowdray-Simpsons, being attentive to an ancient white-haired lady with a hearing aid; there, in a corner, were the two oddly assorted teachers, silent and a little glum; my friend of the boat, Roderick Grant, was consulting a barometer in earnest confabulation with a stocky individual who must be Ronald Beagle; and, deep in a newspaper, sat the unmistakable Hubert Hay, dapper and rotund in the yellowest of Regency waistcoats.

Then Nicholas came quickly round the corner of the stairs, and started down the last flight into the hall.

He saw me straightaway. He paused almost imperceptibly, then descended the last few stairs and came straight across the hall.

"Alastair," I said, under my breath, furious to find that my throat felt tight and dry.

Alastair turned, saw Nicholas, and took the plunge as smoothly as an Olympic swimmer.

"Hi, Nick!" he said. "Look who's here.... Do you remember Janet Brooke?"

He stressed the surname ever so slightly. Nicholas's black brows lifted a fraction of an inch, and something flickered behind his eyes. Then he said: "Of course. Hello, Gianetta. How are you?"

It came back to me sharply, irrelevantly, that Nicholas was the only person who had never shortened my name. I met his eyes with an effort, and said, calmly enough: "I'm fine, thank you. And you?"

"Oh, very fit. You're here on holiday, I take it?"

"Just a short break. Hugo sent me away... ." It was over, the awkward moment, the dreaded moment, sliding past in a ripple of commonplaces, the easy mechanical politenesses that are so much more than empty convention; they are the greaves and cuirasses that arm the naked nerve. And now we could turn from one another in relief, as we were gathered into the group of which Marcia Maling was still the radiant point. She had been talking to Hartley Corrigan, but I could see her watching Nicholas from under her lashes, and now she said, turning to me: "Another old friend, darling?"

I had forgotten for the moment that she was an actress,

and stared at her in surprise, so beautifully artless had

the question been. Then I saw the amusement at the back

of her eyes, and said coolly: "Yes, another old friend.

My London life is catching me up even here, it seems.

Nicholas, let me introduce you to Miss Marcia Maling—

the Marcia Maling, of course. Marcia, this is Nicholas

Drury." „

"The Nicholas Drury?" Marcia cooed it in her- deepest, furriest voice, as she turned the charm full on to him with something of the effect that, we are told, a cosmic ray gun has when turned on to an earthly body.

But Nicholas showed no sign of immediate disintegration. He merely looked ever so slightly wary as he murmured something conventional. He had seen that amused look of Marcia's, too, I knew. He had always been as quick as a cat. Then Hartley Corrigan came in with some remark to Marcia, and, in less time than it takes to write it, the whole party was talking about fish. The men were, at any rate; Marcia was watching Hartley Corrigan, Alma Corrigan watched Marcia, and I found myself studying Nicholas.

He had changed, in four years. He would be thirty-six now, I thought, and he looked older. His kind of dark, saturnine good looks did not alter much, but he was thinner, and, though he seemed fit enough, there was tension in the way he held his shoulders, and some sort of strain about his eyes, as if the skin over his cheekbones was drawn too tightly back into the scalp. I found myself wondering what was on his mind. It couldn't just be the strain of starting a new book, though some stages, I knew, were hell. No, knowing him as I did, I knew that it must be something else, some other obscure stress that I couldn't guess at, but which was unmistakably there. Well, at any rate, I thought, this time I couldn't possibly be the cause of his mood; and neither, this time, did I have to worry about it.

I was just busily congratulating myself that I didn't have to care any more, when the gong sounded, and we all went in to dinner.

IT BECAME MORE THAN EVER OBVIOUS, after dinner, that the awkwardness of my own situation was by no means the only tension in the oddly assorted gathering at the Camasunary Hotel. I had not been overimaginative. That there were emotional undercurrents here seemed more than ever apparent, but I don't think I realized, at first, quite how strong they were. I certainly never imagined they might be dangerous.

By the time I got back into the lounge after dinner, the groups of people had broken and re-formed, and, as is the way in small country hotels, conversation had become general. I saw with a little twinge of wry amusement that Marcia Maling had deserted the Corrigans and was sitting beside Nicholas. It was, I supposed, a change for the better. She could no more help being pulled into the orbit of the nearest interesting man than she could help breathing, but I wished she would leave Hartley Corrigan alone. She had much better spend her time on Nicholas; he could look after himself.

Alastair found a chair for me in a corner, then excused himself and went off to see about weighing and dispatching the salmon he had caught that day. I saw Corrigan get up, without a word to his wife, and follow him from the room. Alma Corrigan sat without looking up, stirring and stirring her coffee.

"Will you have coffee? Black or white?"

I looked up to meet the bright gaze of the younger of the two teachers, who was standing in front of me with a cup in either hand. She had changed into a frock the color of dry sherry, with a cairngorm brooch in the lapel. It was a sophisticated color, and should not have suited her, but somehow it did; it was as if a charming child had dressed up in her elder sister's clothes. She looked younger than ever, and touchingly vulnerable.

I said: "Black, please. Thank you very much. But why should you wait on me?"

She handed me a cup. "Oh, nobody serves the coffee.