Callum

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Calum gave a short, wry laugh. ‘As you say—it’s nothing.’

He went back to join his family in the big room where the tourists came to taste the wines, cleared now of the tables and stools made from old barrels, except for one central table piled high with flowers which Elaine had arranged earlier. Waiting to greet the family were all their employees at the wine-lodge, as well as a great many other local people with whom they had business dealings. The Brodeys seemed to be held in great respect, Elaine noticed as she watched from a doorway, but there was no humility among the employees; owners and workers alike greeted each other with smiles and laughter, like old friends.

As soon as everyone had shaken hands, Elaine gave a signal and the waiters went round with large trays of white port. There were a couple of speeches in Portuguese, then everyone moved out into the huge wine cellars where a special cask was to be broached. These cellars had been a revelation to Elaine: so vast, so high and old, the smell of hundreds of years of maturing wine so strong that you could feel drunk on that alone.

More wine was poured and handed round, empty glasses had to be refilled. Elaine, standing unobtrusively in the background in her neat black velvet evening skirt and short jacket, kept an alert eye on it all, making sure that everything went smoothly. She had worked hard on the setting for this meal, taking the unusual surroundings as a challenge, and transforming the gloomy cellars into a warm and inviting bistro with brightly coloured tablecloths, lamps and candles. But there was nothing cheap about it: the glass was crystal, the plates the finest bone china. And beside each place-setting there was a gift of a wine glass engraved with the date and event, parcels that she had helped wrap herself.

A band of local musicians arrived and soon everyone was dancing, including Francesca, who literally let her hair down as she whirled around the floor, joining in the local folk dances with a young Portuguese. The male Brodeys didn’t dance so much, only doing so if it was a western number, when they dutifully asked the wives of some of their guests and employees.

But Calum had no duty towards Elaine when he asked her to dance. She had come into the cellar to replace some candles which were spluttering and was about to leave when he came over to her. ‘Elaine? Would you care to dance?’

She looked at him in surprise, only now registering that the band was playing a slow number that she recognised from the charts of ten years ago. Guessing that he had again asked her out of pity, she said at once, ‘Thank you, but I’m very busy.’

She went to walk past him, but he put a hand on her arm. Giving her one of his charming smiles, he said, ‘Surely you can take a few minutes off?’

Her heart jumped a little as she thought of being held in his arms, but stubborn pride made her say curtly, ‘Sorry. No.’

The smile didn’t falter. ‘But I insist.’ His grip tightened on her arm and he took a step towards the cleared space where people were dancing, drawing her after him.

Good God, couldn’t the man take no for an answer? Did he think he was doing her a favour, playing the rich man being kind to the lonely little hireling? Her face stiffening, striving to contain her anger but failing, Elaine stood her ground. Calum looked back and became still as he saw the fire in her glance. Tersely, she said, ‘Thank you, Mr Brodey, but I don’t dance.’ And, tugging her arm from his hold, she strode quickly away.

But at the door to the cellar she couldn’t resist glancing back. She expected Calum to have moved away already, to do his duty or be kind to some other female, but he was still standing where she had left him, looking after her with a coldly surprised expression on his handsome face.

She didn’t go into the big cellar again until the members of the family had left. The band played on for a while but Elaine left them to it, arranging for the senior employee at the wine-lodge to shut up the premises when the last guest had gone. It had been a long day and she was tired. Ned and Malcolm had already left, but one of the staff from the palácio drove her back there. It would have been nice to go straight to her room and bed, but Elaine went first to Calum’s office to see if there were any messages for her; taking on a week’s celebrations like this was lucrative but it was difficult to run her own office in London from such a distance.

Several messages had come through to the house on the fax machine, and some by telephone. Only two of them were for her, one acknowledging receipt of the faxed estimate she had sent earlier, the other from her mother-in-law inviting her to a family birthday party, and adding, ‘And perhaps you might like to arrange it.’

She wouldn’t go, of course; her mother-in-law should have realised that by now. But perhaps the older woman thought it her duty to ask her and had added that last sentence to nag Elaine’s conscience, to make her think of the duty she was supposed to owe Neil’s family. But Elaine was quite sure that she owed them nothing whatsoever—not duty, and certainly not affection or love. Her face grim, she crumpled the paper into a tight ball. As she did so, the door opened and Calum came in.

He paused when he saw her. ‘I saw the light was on and wondered who was here,’ he explained. He gave her a guarded look, evidently remembering the way she’d snubbed him earlier.

‘I came to see if there were any messages for me.’

Calum gave a rueful sigh, impatient with himself. ‘I’m sorry, I said I’d look earlier today, didn’t I? I’m afraid—something happened and it went out of my mind.’ He frowned. ‘But surely you were in here this afternoon?’

‘Yes, I received that message. I wanted to see if there was any problem with my answer to it.’ She flicked the ball of paper neatly into a waste-paper basket. ‘Goodnight.’ She went to leave.

‘One moment.’ He lifted a hand to stop her.

Elaine hesitated, then turned to face him. ‘Yes? You have some instructions for me?’ she asked in her most businesslike manner.

‘No. I merely wished to say.’ His eyes, grey and quizzical, met hers. ‘Well, that I hope I didn’t offend you when I asked you to dance this evening.’

‘Offend me? No, of course not,’ she lied.

He was watching her and she was uncomfortably aware that he didn’t believe her, and he proved it by saying, ‘I don’t usually get that reaction when I ask someone to dance.’

‘I was busy,’ she prevaricated.

‘You were furious,’ he countered. ‘Now, why, I wonder?’

‘Not at all,’ she said dismissively, and turned to the door.

But Calum was standing in the way and didn’t move. ‘Have you never danced?’

She thought of refusing to answer, but then said stiffly, ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Then I must have seriously offended you—and I’m extremely sorry. I didn’t mean to—awaken old memories.’

Elaine stared at him speechlessly, realising he was referring to supposed memories of her dead husband that dancing might have evoked. Realised, too, that he was watching her keenly to see if he was right. She suddenly found his presence, his overbearing masculinity, too much, and said shortly, ‘If you’ll excuse me, Mr Brodey, I think I’ll go to my room. I’m very tired.’

A frown flickered in his brows, but he murmured, ‘Of course,’ and moved out of the doorway. But as she went to pass him he put a hand on her arm and said, ‘I thought we’d agreed that you’d call me Calum.’

She found, unnervingly, that his touch sent a tremor of awareness sighing through her veins. But somehow she managed to control it and her voice was light, casual, as she said, ‘So we did. Goodnight, then, Calum.’

‘Goodnight, Elaine. I hope you sleep well.’

But when Elaine got into bed she lay awake for some time. Trying to ignore her stupid reaction to his touch, she went over that conversation in his study, wondering why Calum had bothered with her at all. Was it that he was piqued because she’d refused to dance with him? Did he expect all women to fall for his charm and good looks? Which they probably did, she thought cynically. Well, that made him a male chauvinist of the first order, as far as Elaine was concerned. She had seen too much of that type, lived with one for too long, and now had no time for it. In her case, it was once bitten forever shy.

Inevitably, her thoughts drifted back to the time when she had met Neil, nearly ten years ago. She had been so young then, only eighteen, innocent, impressionable. But Neil had been over thirty, a success in his chosen career, fully adult in every sense of the word. He had literally swept her off her feet, knocking into her one day at the tennis club, when he had run from his court into the next to hit a lob, and cannoned into her. She had fallen, and Neil, she remembered, had hit the lob back and scored the point before he’d turned to help her up. An action that was typical of him, although she hadn’t realised it for quite some time.

He had been staying with friends while on leave, but spent the rest of the time pursuing her—there was no other word for it—determined to capture Elaine’s heart as quickly as possible. He had done so quite easily; she had been overwhelmed by him, had never before met anyone with his masterful assertiveness, his clean-cut good looks, his easy charm. They had been married only a few months after they met, and it had been quite a lot later before she’d found out that his masterfulness hid an iron determination always to have his own way. His good looks attracted other women of whom he took full advantage, and his charm was used to make the lies he told acceptable, even believable.

Since then she had become extremely wary of any man who had any one of those qualities—and Calum Brodey had all three, in abundance. Which gave her every reason to steer well clear of him, even if all he felt towards her was a sort of conscience-pricked pity.

Elaine turned restlessly on her pillow, cross with herself for having even thought of Calum. It was, she realised, going to be one of those nights. Switching on the bedside lamp, she sat up and leaned against a pillow, picked up a novel which she kept for nights like these. But tonight reading didn’t work, didn’t leave her with buzzing eyes and a mind so tired that nothing would keep her awake. Her mind drifted from the book to that almost peremptory invitation from her mother-in-law. Again resentment filled her. Neil’s mother had always known he was a womaniser. She might have expected, if not hoped, that marriage to an innocent teenager would change him, but hadn’t cared in the least when it hadn’t. Neil might have been faithful for a year or so, but Elaine strongly doubted if it had been more than that.

She hadn’t known at the time, of course; Neil had been away a lot, taking courses and things, and he had been so ardent when he came home that she had been completely fooled. It had only been towards the end, when he’d had a post near home but was forever making excuses to be away, that she had begun to suspect. She had been pregnant at the time.

Lonely one weekend, because Neil was away—at a conference, he’d said—she’d thought she would please him by taking a couple of his suits to the cleaners. Going through his pockets, she’d found a hotel bill made out to Mr and Mrs Beresford. A hotel in a well-known chain, situated in a suburban town not too far away; a hotel at which she had never stayed, the bill dated at a time when Neil was supposed to have been on a course nowhere near that town. The kind of outdoor training course for new recruits where he was never near a phone, definitely not available, so she had never tried to contact him.

Trying to convince herself that she was wrong, Elaine rang the hotel and asked if Mr and Mrs Beresford were staying there again. She was told they were. For hours she walked round the house, wondering, trying to convince herself that there was some mistake; it wasn’t true. In the end she got in the car and drove over to the hotel, knowing that she had to see for herself. Only when she reached it did it occur to Elaine that finding out might not be so easy. The receptionist might not give her Neil’s room number; he might have gone out. Even with this terrible suspicion in her mind, she couldn’t bring herself to think of their room, that they might have gone out.

In the end it was terribly easy. It was late evening and the hotel entrance was deserted, the guests either out or eating in the restaurant. Looking through the glass doors of the latter, Elaine saw Neil sitting with a blonde girl. Even as she watched they rose to leave. Quickly, her mind panicking, Elaine hid in a darkened telephone booth. They passed quite close to her as they came out into the lobby and she saw that the blonde was very curvacious, her breasts almost falling out of her tight red dress. Neil had his arm round her and kissed her neck lasciviously as they waited for a lift. The girl giggled—and reached out to stroke him! Neil’s head came up and he looked round, making Elaine shrink back in her hiding place. Seeing no one, he put his hand over the girl’s and pressed it against himself.

The lift came and they got into it, Neil pulling the girl close, his hands low on her hips, even before the doors had closed.

For several minutes Elaine couldn’t move, then she rushed into the ladies’ room and was horribly ill. Immediately afterwards she ran blindly back to the car and drove away as fast as she could, tears streaming down her face. So much for her perfect marriage; so much for trust and love; so much for the father of this child she was carrying, the baby she had longed for for so longyears. Sobbing wildly, wiping the tears from her eyes so that she could see, Elaine just kept going, not caring where she was heading, only knowing that she couldn’t go home, that it wasn’t her home any more, the place on which she had lavished such loving care. All for Neil! All for Neil! Now it was just the place he came back to when he wasn’t with that girl!

She didn’t feel anger, not then; she felt only shame and a terrible certainty that it must be her fault, that he would never have gone to bed with someone else unless she had failed him sexually. That side of their marriage had not been a success right from the start. Neil had been a selfish lover, always taking his own pleasure, any excitement she might feel being incidental. He had wanted her to do things that she found unnatural and which she’d resisted, but instead of persuading her Neil had forced her to do them. She’d become afraid of sex, unable to relax, and Neil had got angry and hurt her, accused her of being frigid. During the first few years of their marriage she had blamed herself entirely; she hadn’t known that not every man treated sex almost as an assault course and left their wives bruised and frustrated. But she still loved him because she thought that she had made him behave like it.

That terrible night, Elaine found herself driving down an unlit country road. A car rounded a bend towards her, going fast, its headlights dazzling her. It hooted at her angrily. Her eyes blurred by tears, she swerved to avoid it, and ended up in a ditch. The other driver didn’t stop. She wasn’t hurt but it took an effort to climb out of the car and back on to the road. She waited for some time, expecting another car to come by, but the road stayed dark, deserted. Soon it began to rain. She began to get cold and had to climb into the car again and get her jacket and handbag. Reaching to where it had fallen, she felt a pain in her stomach.

Having no idea where she was, Elaine grimly began to walk to the nearest house so that she could phone a garage. But there was no house for miles and she ended up in a phone box, dialling for an ambulance, curled up in pain and knowing that she was losing her baby.

She didn’t tell Neil the truth about what had happened; never told him. And he never found out. By the time he had been ‘traced’ at his so-called conference, she was in hospital, the car retrieved by the AA and brought home with only a dented wing to show for what had happened. She told him she’d skidded off the road to avoid a cat when she was going shopping, the morning after she’d seen him with the girl. He didn’t bother to check her story, blamed her for what happened, yelling that she was a bloody rotten driver, that she ought to have had more sense and driven over the cat rather than avoid it. His parents blamed her too, and left her in no doubt of their feelings.

Neil was genuinely upset over the loss of the baby, Elaine was sure of that; he accused her of killing it often enough. Not that he needed to: as it was she felt consumed by guilt. She tried to make it up to him by taking better care of him: his clothes were always beautifully laundered, his meals cooked to perfection, and when he wanted sex she forced herself to be especially warm, especially loving; she even tried to please him by doing some of the things she found so abhorrent. But it seemed that wasn’t what he wanted from her any more. He told her to stop acting like a cheap tramp; she was his wife, for God’s sake!

The anger came back then, and the next time he took her she just lay there, not resisting but not taking part, her mind completely detached. That seemed to anger Neil even more, but he soon got tired of it, soon left her alone. He began to go away a lot more, sometimes staying away for weeks at a time. He had taken up flying, but never took her with him. Then one day he tried to do an acrobatic manoeuvre: it didn’t work, and he crashed the plane and was killed.

Shocked and stunned by his death, Elaine took a couple of months to get round to going through his desk. There were the usual papers, but in a locked drawer she found his diaries. It was all there, fully detailed and sometimes illustrated with erotic photographs—accounts of his affairs with women, some long-lasting, some one-night stands. Among the names, the faces in the photographs above the naked bodies, were some she recognised—girls she had thought to be her friends, wives of his fellow officers, even the barmaid from the local pub.

It had gone on for years. She looked back at the diaries for the years before he had met her and it had been going on then too. It was obvious from the comments when he had got some girl into trouble and his mother had bailed him out that she knew, had always known, even after he and Elaine were married. There was one very telling comment:

Ma was bragging about how I took one of the girls to bed at her anniversary party, right from under Elaine’s nose, while she was clearing the food away. It wasn’t a bad lay, although the girl was a bit tipsy. Can’t remember her name.

Reading through the diaries up until her wedding, Elaine realised she seemed to be the only one of his women that he hadn’t made love to at the first available opportunity. Maybe it had amused him to keep her a virgin until their wedding night. The diaries for the two years after her marriage she couldn’t bear to look at. Still couldn’t, she mused now. But she had kept them all, and whenever she felt down she read them, fuelling her strength and determination from the anger they created in her.

All grief gone, her heart a hard ball in her chest, Elaine had immediately sold the house, bought a small flat in London, and started her business on the remaining capital. Her mother-in-law had strongly objected, evidently expecting her to grieve like a dutiful widow for the rest of her life. But anger had given her life and still sustained her, so that tonight she had been able to treat Neil’s mother’s invitation with the contempt that she felt for the woman herself.

The next morning Elaine woke feeling heavy-eyed, but had to pull herself together and pack some clothes to take with her to the quinta where she would be staying for a couple of nights. She did some paperwork while she ate a belated breakfast, making out fresh check-lists and going through others, ticking off what had been done and underlining things that were becoming urgent. Afterwards she had a conference with Ned and Malcolm, making sure that they knew what they had to do.

This done, Elaine took her case out to the main hall and went to look for Francesca. She found her in the sitting-room talking to Michel, and would have excused herself but Francesca beckoned her in.

‘Oh, there you are, Elaine. I’m all ready to leave.’

‘Where are you going?’ Michel wanted to know.

‘To the quinta. We’re going on ahead to prepare for tomorrow’s party.’

Michel immediately offered to drive them there, but Francesca refused and they went out to her open-topped sports car. Michel hovered around, looking sulky, but Francesca merely said, ‘Goodbye, Michel. Maybe I’ll see you around some time.’

She drove down towards Oporto, crossing the road bridge and turning on to the road that wound along beside the river. When they were out of the town, Francesca gave a sigh. ‘Have you ever done something that you regretted immediately afterwards?’

Elaine laughed. ‘Loads of times. Why, what have you done?’

‘Invited Michel to spend the week here. I can’t think why I did it. Because I thought I’d be lonely, I suppose. And because he made it clear that he so much wanted to come that he made me feel guilty.’ She glanced at Elaine, saw the wind playing with tendrils of red hair that had come loose from the rather severe style she habitually wore. ‘You’re so sure of yourself; I’m sure you don’t really make mistakes like that.’

‘I used to,’ Elaine admitted, thinking back. ‘But I don’t now. I never let anyone use moral blackmail on me, and I don’t do anything that I don’t want to.’

‘Good heavens!’ Francesca’s eyebrows rose at the hardness in her tone. ‘What made you like that?’

‘I went to an assertiveness training course for women. It did me a great deal of good.’

‘So it sounds. Maybe that’s what I need.’

‘Well, you were quite terse with Michel; he surely won’t hang around after that?’

‘I hope not. But there are some men you just can’t get rid of, aren’t there?’ Elaine was silent, wondering if Francesca wanted to get rid of Michel so that she would be free to continue her affair with Calum. But the Princess mistook her silence and after a moment said, ‘Sorry, Elaine. I’m not being very tactful, am I, boring on about boyfriends?’

‘It doesn’t bother me.’

Francesca gave her an interested glance. ‘How long is it since your husband was killed?’

‘Nearly three years.’

‘You must miss him terribly.’ Again Elaine didn’t answer, so Francesca took her silence for assent. A strangely wistful look came into her eyes, and she said, ‘I suppose when you’ve had a loving, happy marriage it must be terribly hard to adjust. You must feel that there could never be anyone who could possibly take your husband’s place?’

‘Oh, quite,’ Elaine agreed with hidden irony. Francesca was right: no one could take Neil’s place, because she was going to make darn sure that no man ever did. She neither trusted nor needed them and was perfectly happy and fulfilled on her own. But then she remembered the frisson of sexual awareness that Calum had aroused in her and she felt suddenly unsure of herself. But it was only for the briefest moment, and then she sternly told herself that an occasional lapse was only natural; she was still young after all, and her femininity hadn’t died just because Neil had turned out to be a lying cheat. OK, so she hadn’t felt anything like that in years, but she supposed that it would be bound to happen, now and again, until she’d managed to stifle any sexuality she had left. Not wanting to talk about men, she pointed across the river. ‘What beautiful scenery.’