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CHAPTER TWO
THE long, uncomfortable trek back to the house gave Morgan plenty of time to cast a cold, self-critical eye over her behaviour that afternoon. Her meeting with Richard Kavanagh was, it seemed, only an accident; she didn’t think she’d hurt Elaine’s chances yet. But if she’d really taken Elaine’s interests seriously she would have been dressed and ready for company over an hour ago. Well, she would make up for it all now, she vowed. One bald, fat, cigar-smoking TV executive wouldn’t know what had hit him.
She left the children in the kitchen, vying to tell her father and stepmother the story of her latest scrape, and hurried upstairs to the room that she was sharing with Elaine, her own having been made over to the mystery guest.
Elaine’s meticulously packed suitcase lay open on one twin bed, but at least Elaine wasn’t there. The signs of her single-minded pursuit of success through the years—the trophies and certificates and Elaine-edited school newspapers, the photos of Elaine with all the girls from the ‘in’ group at school—seemed to glare at her in mute reproach as she tore off her wet, muddy clothes, but at least it was better than hearing Elaine’s views of her carelessness at first hand.
She showered at breakneck speed, dried her hair, managed to French-braid it on only the fifth attempt, and at last slipped into the cherry-coloured silk tunic that she had bought a few days earlier. ‘Make an effort,’ Elaine had said, so she’d allowed herself to be seduced by the blaze of embroidery, by the way the superficial demureness of the princess collar, long, close-fitting sleeves and knee-length hem was undercut by long slits up the sides of the skirt. Next she put on tights, new high-heeled shoes—must remember not to fall over, she thought—and then was ready for the coup de grâce.
Morgan examined rather nervously the collection of cosmetics that she’d bought, egged on by the mother of one of her pupils.
‘Make the most of yourself,’ Razna had urged, and had shown her how to apply lipstick and kohl, mascara and eyeshadow in a glamorous style which matched the dress.
Hastily Morgan did her best to follow the precepts she’d been given, lining her eyes with black, colouring her lips a brilliant crimson. At last she stood back and gazed doubtfully at her reflection. Striking, yes. Perhaps even beautiful. But the natural look it was not. Was this really what Elaine meant by making an effort?
Morgan hesitated, wondering whether she should just scrub it all off—she could imagine how her family would tease her. But in the mirror her eyes were great misty pools within their black rims, her mouth had a lovely bitter-sweet curve—how could you be too beautiful? She’d been enchanted by this unfamiliar image when Razna had first conjured it up, and surely a susceptible TV executive couldn’t fail to be impressed?
Don’t be such a coward, she told herself sternly. With an involuntary squaring of the shoulders she left the room and made her way precariously down the stairs and into the sitting room.
As the door opened a confusion of phrases burst upon her—‘massive great tyre’, ‘dead easy’, ‘all afternoon’, ‘thought it was safe!’ Her father and stepmother were nowhere to be seen. The room held the three children and Elaine, who sat on the sofa, one gleaming, silk-encased leg crossed over the other. Her suit of brilliant aquamarine raw silk, with its microscopic skirt, made her look at once sexy and formidably self-assured.
As Morgan came in Elaine pushed back the glossy blonde hair which fell to her jaw in a sophisticated cut. She shot Morgan a look which managed to convey both exasperation over the afternoon’s peccadillo and unenthusiastic assessment of her sister’s clothes and make-up.
Morgan suppressed a sigh. She should have known that she couldn’t carry it off. Well, at least the children didn’t know about Richard Kavanagh.
‘You get more like Mother every day,’ Elaine remarked irritably. ‘You know, the other day I saw a piece in the paper—BRITISH TOURIST SETS OFF AVALANCHE, ALPINE VILLAGE DESTROYED—and the first thing I thought was, I didn’t know Mother could ski.’
‘I think she’s in the Himalayas,’ Morgan said non-committally, fighting down an impulse to spring to her mother’s defence. Since their parents’ divorce their mother had been happily wandering remote corners of the globe with little more than a pair of jeans and a rucksack; twelve years later Morgan still sometimes felt as if she’d lost her only ally.
‘Well, God help Nepal,’ Elaine said offhandedly.
Morgan changed the subject abruptly. ‘Where’s your guest?’ she asked, for there was no sign of the TV executive who was to fall victim to her charms.
‘I can’t imagine,’ said Elaine. ‘He started well ahead of me; I don’t know what can be keeping him—Oh, wait, that must be him now!’
From outside came the crunch of tyres on gravel. A vague uneasiness plucked at Morgan; surely it was impossible...?
They heard a door slam, footsteps. The doorbell rang. Elaine fractionally adjusted her sleek, gleaming legs and waited.
They heard their father hurrying up from the kitchen, a door opening, muffled exclamations. Morgan could feel her heart pounding, as if it had slowed down while she’d held her breath.
A disjointed murmur grew gradually louder as Mr Roberts and his companion approached the door of the sitting room.
‘The girls will look after you. You will forgive me, won’t you? The Béarnaise sauce is at a frightfully delicate stage—’
Hasty footsteps retreated down the corridor, and the door opened on a tall, black-browed, sardonic man who bore not the faintest resemblance to the fat, cigar-smoking executive of Morgan’s fond imagination.
For the second time that day Morgan’s heart plummeted, and a voice in her head said, You idiot, you idiot, you idiot, you idiot.
‘Richard, what on earth happened to you?’ exclaimed Elaine. The newcomer also didn’t look much like the cool, laid-back presenter of Firing Line. His hair was streaked with sweat, one black lock falling forward in his face, and, while he had taken off his jacket, his shirt and trousers were plastered with mud, as was the lower half of what had once probably been a nice tie.
‘Had a spot of bother with a tyre,’ he said offhandedly, with a crooked grin. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, but I’d better dash upstairs and change.’
‘Of course,’ said Elaine. ‘I’ll just introduce you quickly and then show you where we’ve put you. Let’s see...this is Ben, Sarah, Jenny... Where’s Morgan? Oh, there you are; and this is my sister Morgan. And, of course, this is Richard Kavanagh.’
He stared, eyes narrowed, at the brilliant creature who lurked in the corner.
‘Well, look who’s here!’ he said. ‘What a delightful surprise.’
Morgan looked at him dubiously, her black-rimmed grey eyes wary. There was an odd little flutter in her stomach which made it hard to think straight—and she needed all her wits about her. She glanced nervously at Elaine.
‘Do you two know each other, then?’ asked Elaine. ‘Oh, I suppose you must have met at one of my parties. What a memory you’ve got, Richard.’
Morgan remembered the brief, chilling glimpse she’d had of Richard Kavanagh at one of Elaine’s parties and shuddered. All she needed was for him to remember it too...
‘Is that where we ran into each other?’ he asked her mockingly. Just for a moment Morgan felt a shameful, overwhelming relief—at least Elaine didn’t know how badly she’d behaved. But then on the heels of relief came suspicion. He didn’t miss much—he’d worked out that she didn’t want Elaine to know about this afternoon. But he didn’t owe her any favours. What kind of game was he playing?
‘Oh, there are always so many people at Elaine’s parties,’ Morgan said vaguely. ‘Lovely to see you again, anyway.’ She gave him a bright, meaningless smile. ‘Come on, kids; let’s go and have dinner.’
Elaine looked surprised but not displeased. She’d bargained with Leah to have the children eat separately; the subtraction of Morgan from the grown-up table could only increase her chances of impressing her guest.
‘Aren’t you eating with us?’ Morgan wasn’t a bit surprised by his look of incredulity—he probably didn’t think any female under the age of eighty would willingly forgo his company. She was surprised to see that he looked distinctly put out. He hadn’t seemed all that anxious for her conversation an hour or so ago!
‘Oh, it can be rather chaotic with this lot around; Leah thought you might prefer rational conversation,’ Morgan said airily. ‘And I hardly ever get to see the children.’
‘Why on earth should they be segregated just because of me?’ he said, with an apparent modesty which made Morgan want to throw something—preferably at him. ‘I know they must be starving, but I’ll be back in half a tick—and then maybe we can work out where we met.’
Morgan caved in in the face of this veiled threat. For all the surface charm of his manner, there was a determination in the hard grey eyes which convinced her that further attempts to escape would be worse than useless. While Kavanagh disappeared upstairs she tried to think of a way of delicately warning Elaine—‘You remember your party the Christmas before last, the one where Richard Kavanagh walked into a door? I was the door’—and gave it up in despair.
He was back in twenty minutes, having changed into a white jacket and trousers and a pale green shirt, open at the neck. Morgan had grown up with boys who took it for granted that the tougher you were, the more torn and battered your clothes were; she found this combination of casual elegance and confident masculinity rather unnerving. While she was thinking about this Elaine walked up to Kavanagh and kissed him lightly on the mouth.
Morgan tried not to goggle. Was Elaine actually romantically involved with him, then? Or was this just one of those kisses that people in show business threw around as a casual social gesture?
Even as she puzzled it over, Kavanagh made it just slightly more than a gesture, if that was how it had been intended, by just barely bending his head, responding and at the same time fractionally lengthening the kiss. And somehow the very casualness of the embrace showed just how unquestionably these two handsome, stylish people belonged together—it was like watching Cary Grant kiss Grace Kelly.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ Kavanagh murmured, while Morgan fought down a ridiculous sense of chagrin. As a child she had admired but not envied Elaine’s golden-haired prettiness, priding herself instead on protecting the sister two years behind her, and on rivalling the boys for daring and toughness and complete indifference to clothes. But somehow daring and toughness didn’t stand her in very good stead these days; somehow her sister’s unabashed femininity gave Elaine an armour that Morgan couldn’t hope to match.
Elaine made some offhand remark and they headed for the dining room. Morgan caught sight of herself in the mirror above the sideboard; her eyes were still misty pools, her mouth still had that wistful smile, but the lovely mask gave her none of the confidence she’d hoped for. She didn’t feel feminine or glamorous; she felt a fraud who was about to be unmasked at any moment.
This uneasy feeling was soon compounded, for the minute they sat down the children returned to that delightful subject—Morgan’s escapades.
Leah ladled out soup, Morgan’s father filled glasses, and the Terrible Twins launched yet again into the story of the tyre.
‘Morgan’s always doing that kind of thing,’ boasted Jenny, with pride. ‘She abseiled off the church tower for a bet—’
‘And when Mick tried it he broke his arm!’ burst in Sarah with the punchline.
‘She went over the falls in a punt—’
‘And Steve almost drowned!’
‘She was in a motorcycle rally when she was fifteen!’ said Ben, determined to get in this marvellous fact before one of the others did. ‘And she jumped out of a parachute.’
‘And lived to tell the tale,’ said the visitor. ‘Naturally. I trust she visits the graves of Mick and Steve from time to time?’
Morgan glowered at him, A little smile was tugging at the corner of his mouth; he obviously thought that she was completely ridiculous. And then, just when she thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, her irritation gave way to horror as the children all but blew her cover.
‘She jumped out of an aeroplane, with a parachute,’ said Sarah. ‘Ben gets everything wrong. And she raised seven hundred pounds for A Child’s Place—isn’t that wonderful?’
Morgan held her breath. The brilliant, penetrating grey eyes rested on her thoughtfully. ‘Well, there’s obviously a lot more to your sister than meets the eye,’ he remarked in an ironical tone that made her want to hit him.
And then, to her dismay, he went on, ‘Is A Child’s Place some sort of charity, then? I don’t think I’ve heard of it.’
‘Morgan teaches there,’ said Jenny. ‘It’s for poor little homeless children who don’t have a school of their own.’ She paused to admire the pathetic image conjured up by her words, and Richard Kavanagh pounced like a wolf—but not, of course, on the innocent little child who had spilled the beans.
‘Surely there can’t be much call for that?’ he said. ‘Anyone with a child has top priority for housing—’
‘Yes,’ said Morgan, who had been through this argument hundreds of times. ‘But sometimes people get put in places that don’t mesh very well with ordinary schools... We try to help children make the most of whatever time they have before they’re moved somewhere else, instead of just expecting them to fit into a timetable set up to cover a whole school year, where if they fall behind it’s just too bad—’ She broke off, dismayed at where her enthusiasm was leading her. How much had he been told at that ghastly party?
‘Yes, I see,’ said Kavanagh. ‘That makes much more sense—it’s a good idea. I’m surprised no one has thought of it before; isn’t anybody else doing anything?’
‘No,’ said Morgan.
‘Are you sure? I seem to remember hearing of something very similar some time ago—I can’t remember the name, but—’
‘Why don’t you put your research department onto it?’ said Morgan. ‘I’m sure if they dig around enough they can find someone to say it’s completely superfluous. After all, there are two sides to every question, and if not you can always invent one just to be sure of being impartial.’
If she hadn’t been so nervous she would have been amused by the look of blank astonishment which greeted this outburst. But before he could reply Elaine threw herself into the conversation with the aplomb of the experienced chat-show host, and for the next hour the talk remained firmly fixed on current events. Elaine’s versatility on her breakfast show was nothing to the brilliance she showed now—she seemed to know about everything.
Morgan fought down another pang of regret at the contrast between her own gaucheness and Elaine’s maturity. The whole point of having the man here was to give Elaine a chance to show her paces. She glanced down the table to see what sort of impression Elaine was making, and dropped her eyes hastily. He might be arguing with Elaine, but the cool grey gaze was still fixed unwaveringly on Morgan’s face.
Just for an instant she felt a shameful, delicious frisson at his unexpected interest. But then cold sense pointed out the frightening, unflattering truth. He suspected something.
Presently she sensed that he had looked away, and in spite of herself she found her eyes drawn slowly back down the table. Sure enough, the hawk-like face was now turned to Elaine. And now that she was no longer the centre of attention she had the opportunity to observe him at leisure.
Even after more than a year she remembered well enough the contrast between the television image and the real thing. The physical toughness of the man, which you wouldn’t have guessed from the talking head, made it easier to understand how he had talked his way into and out of a series of guerrilla hide-outs for an early, notorious season of Firing Line. So, oddly enough, did a charisma so strong that it was almost palpable. She could imagine him impressing men who lived by a code of unrelenting machismo—and then charming the socks off them.
What she hadn’t remembered, because she hadn’t previously had a chance to see it, was his rather terrifying talent for being at ease with just about every subject under the sun. Here he was, talking, unbriefed, on subjects that Elaine had presumably worked up—and still he had her on the hop.
But even as Morgan admitted, grudgingly, that he probably had the most powerful mind of anyone she’d ever met, even as she laughed, reluctantly, at his irreverent wit at the expense of the world’s movers and shakers she found herself gritting her teeth.
Again and again he deployed the same tactic, putting forward a controversial, even shocking suggestion ‘for the sake of argument’, and then leaving Elaine to struggle to show why it was wrong. When watching this move on television Morgan usually shouted at the screen. Now, while her sister fought off humiliation at the hands of a man she seemed to care about personally as well as professionally, Morgan was forced to keep a low profile, to open her mouth only to put peas into it.
While she managed to keep quiet, however, it didn’t occur to her to school her face to an air of pleasant interest, and it gradually settled into a stormy expression strangely at odds with the harem-like make-up. Kavanagh glanced her way from time to time with a rather odd smile, and once or twice tried to draw her into the discussion; each time she made a noncommittal remark, her eyes still hurling defiance, and refused to be drawn.
But at last it was too much to bear. He had been talking with chilling satisfaction about a prominent local politician whose corruption had been exposed by Firing Line, and who was now serving time in a low-security prison. Morgan glared at him.
His eye caught hers for a long moment. ‘But you seem to disapprove?’ An eyebrow flickered upwards; a lazy smile mocked her for daring to disagree.
‘I thought it was absolutely appalling, the way you took Corvin to pieces,’ she said, goaded. ‘Why did you have to keep needling him about his sixties idealism? He looked absolutely heartbroken by the end of the programme. What possible good did it do?’
He gave a faint, indifferent shrug. ‘He got the post in the first place because he persuaded people that he’d be an improvement on the back-scratching lot who’d been running it for twenty years. It seemed fair enough to bring that up if he’d turned into something as bad as what he was meant to replace.’
This was as good as a red flag to a bull. Morgan forgot her promise to be tactful and discreet and behave like a civilised adult; how dared he pretend that he only brought up legitimate points, when he really just played to the crowd? Infuriated, she sailed in with a comprehensive list of every disgraceful bit of showmanship she could remember.
‘And what about Cy Burgess?’ she concluded. ‘Or Everard Macready? What about the time you read out letters that union leader—what was his name? Mick Bryson?—had written to the wife of the owner of FairWay? Was that necessary? I suppose you thought it was absolutely marvellous when he actually passed out on stage.’
The electric grey eyes widened as she went on, and by the time she had finished his clever, mobile face showed an odd mixture of emotions—surprise, amusement, perhaps a touch of respect, but above all a maddening self-satisfaction. Remorse, it seemed, was conspicuous by its absence.
‘Morgan,’ he said at last, ‘as far as I can see you’ve caught just about every broadcast of the programme for the last three years—and that despite loathing everything about the way I go about things.’
He cocked an eyebrow. ‘I hate to say this, but as far as I’m concerned that means I must be doing something right. For better or worse, that’s what television’s about—not just covering worthy issues, but getting people to watch you week after week after week.’ His mouth curled into a rather cynical smile. ‘Whatever you say about my methods, if you keep watching I must be doing a pretty good job.’
‘But don’t you personally have any opinion of whether it’s right to treat people that way?’ Morgan demanded. ‘What do you do—give them all an apology and a pat on the back afterwards—no hard feelings, it was just business? That may be good enough for the Godfather, but don’t you think you should come up with something better if you’re going to take the moral high ground?’
He began to look slightly annoyed. ‘I try to make sure of my facts; assuming I’ve got those right, I don’t think what I say calls for apology. That doesn’t mean I have a licence to insult people at will; if I get hold of the wrong end of the stick, of course I offer a retraction.’
Morgan scowled.
‘For God’s sake, you can’t seriously think I do it for the sheer fun of being rude to people?’ His voice roughened with impatience.
‘Of course you enjoy it!’ Morgan retorted. ‘You love twisting the knife—and some people love to watch you do it, though why I can’t imagine. It may be good TV, but don’t you ever wonder whether the kind of spectacle you provide limits the stories you can cover? No—because you revel in hacking people apart.’
There was a stunned silence around the table. Mr and Mrs Roberts looked shocked, the children thrilled, Elaine gallantly cheerful, as if one of her morning TV guests had passed out in a drunken stupor. Only Richard Kavanagh seemed unfazed. If anything, he looked more animated than he had all evening. The queer light eyes positively blazed under the black brows, and a smile tugged at his mouth.
‘I like to think my weapon is the rapier,’ he murmured. And then, with an apparent shift of ground, he added, ‘But I’m quite capable of taking an interest in subjects and people where there’s not a hint of wrongdoing.’
He smiled. ‘Look, sterling probity may not make for very interesting TV, but that’s not to say it doesn’t exist, or that I’m incapable of appreciating it when I find it—you may not have noticed, but just at the moment I’m not actually on the air.’ And then, while Morgan tried to think of a polite way of saying, Tell that to the Marines, he slid his blade home.
‘So why don’t you tell me a bit more about your work with the poor little homeless children with no school of their own?’ The amusement in his voice invited her to share the joke, but this home thrust stopped Morgan in her tracks.
‘I’d be happy to,’ she lied. ‘When we’ve more time.’
‘It’s so nice to have the chance to meet fans face to face,’ he said lazily, ‘and find out what they really think.’ The fist inside the velvet glove, thought Morgan; he was threatening to let Elaine know what she’d been up to. But her scrape of this afternoon paled to insignificance beside the mess she’d be in if he remembered where he’d seen her before, or, for that matter, decided to take a real interest in the charity.
‘I didn’t think you had much time for your fans,’ she replied coolly. ‘After all, I don’t suppose you care for being treated as somebody’s personal property.’ She met his eyes squarely, daring him to take up the gauntlet.
‘That,’ he said mildly, ‘depends very much on the person.’ And he gave her an outrageously charming smile.
Morgan made the interesting discovery that a smile could have all the impact of a punch in the solar plexus—even when you were actually furious with the owner. The man was a public menace; she could feel her resistance crumbling, could actually feel the corners of her own mouth turning up in involuntary response to that look of extravagant admiration. It didn’t even seem to matter that she knew it was an act—she knew how ridiculous she must look beside Elaine, and still she felt herself warming to him.
She bit her lip fiercely and glared at him. He was here to be impressed by Elaine, not to flirt with Elaine’s sister.
‘Are you finished with your plate?’ she asked abruptly. While they had been scrapping everyone had finished eating. Escape was at hand.
Morgan turned to her stepmother. ‘You’ve been slaving for hours, Leah, and tomorrow will be just as bad. Go and lie on a sofa somewhere,’ she said firmly.
She stood up and began collecting the rest of the dishes and carrying them out to the kitchen.
