Authors: Roberta Latow
Arthur Edridge looked as if he had been slapped in the face by Byron. He tried to compose himself. With a certain amount of dignity, he did manage to suggest, ‘Well, at least leave Cressida with me, she’ll be safe here.’
‘No, Poppy,’ Cressida pleaded. ‘I want to go home. We’ll make it, you’re the best driver in the world. Please don’t leave me here.’
Byron kissed the top of his daughter’s head and told her: ‘Wouldn’t think of it, princess.’ They were now at the front door. He ordered, ‘You wait here, I’ll bring the car round. I’ll toot the horn and you come running, fast as you can. We’ll be OK, and home in no time. We’ll all be OK.’
But they weren’t OK, neither of them, for a very long time.
Cressida raised the skirts of her evening dress, removed her shoes and walked down from the terrace on to the grass and along the lawn, following the strangers down on the beach with her eyes until they vanished from her view. The bay looked so beautiful, the beach so empty and private. She remembered it had not been so that night.
The journey home was harrowing with wind, rain, the flooding of the roads and lanes, trees down, hedges torn up, cars abandoned. And the night was black, black. Electrical lines were down everywhere. They did make it home through the storm to find Hollihocks aglow with
light, candles and oil lamps in every window. Cressida’s heart sank. She knew as well as Byron did that the staff had turned the house into a beacon, a lighthouse, to guide any boats lost in the storm in towards land and a safe haven. But also that they had really done it for the
Sea Hawk
.
‘There is no point in being negative about this, Cressida. We have to assume, until we hear differently, the
Sea Hawk
never set sail from Provincetown. I’m not telling you not to worry, I’m just telling you we have to assume our worrying is for nothing, or we’ll never get through this night. Got it, Cressy?’
‘Got it, Byron.’
‘Good girl. Now take my hand and we’ll make a dash up the stairs and into the house.’
They were soaked and chilled when they burst through the front door. The staff were assembled in the house: gardeners, chauffeur, handyman, cook, cleaners, and all the stable lads except for one who had stayed with the horses in the stable. Ben the boatman was keeping the boathouse and dock alight with lanterns. The staff seemed to converge on Byron and Cressida from every room in the house where they had been standing watching from various windows for any sight of a boat in distress in the bay. Somehow that made Cressida’s heart ache with pain for what might be. She looked at her father and could see the worry in his eyes, and sense his distress.
The housekeeper, Mrs Travers, who was devoted to Rosemary, who had actually been her nanny when she had been a child, seemed devastated and unable to function. It was Cook, Miss Clemmens, and Byron’s secretary, Mrs Cole, who seemed to be in control of things.
‘The telephone. Any word?’ he asked them.
‘Nothing. All day there’ve been phone calls but nothing from the family, Mr Vine.’ That was Miss Clemmens.
‘The messages are on your desk, Mr Vine,’ said his secretary, who had remained in the house because she had left it too late to go home and was afraid to drive in the storm.
Byron started for the nearest telephone. ‘The lines are down, Mr Vine, have been for hours now.’
‘How stupid of me. I did know that, I tried to call you from town.’
It was dawn before the rain eased off and the storm blew itself back out to sea. But the wind still howled around Hollihocks. By the time the candles and lamps were extinguished, the sun was high in a now bright blue sky and the wind had dropped. Cressida, who had stayed awake all night, was sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room snuggled against her father. The worst night of her life had her reconciled to the idea that she would never see her mother or Hal or Tim again.
When it was considered safe, the staff left the house to assess the damage to their houses and to Hollihocks. Only the cook and housekeeper remained. By midday the phone was working. Byron made endless calls trying to find some trace of his family. At two o’clock in the afternoon Cressida spotted the
Sea Hawk
being towed in by a Coast Guard cutter. Her shouts of: ‘They’re back, they’re back!’ had Byron running to the window where she was jumping up and down with joy.
His face showed relief, tempered with restraint. He was an old salt who knew the sea, the
Sea Hawk
, and what they were capable of. Byron had known all along just how bad Rosemary and the children’s chances were of arriving home safely. And he knew his Rosemary. It would never have occurred to his wife that she could not outsail that storm. Her ego, the wilfulness of the woman, would never have allowed her to remain berthed in Provincetown if she had made up her mind to sail back to Amiable Bay. Riding out a south-wester. She would have presented the challenge as a lark to the boys, and they would have believed her.
Byron would have to see Rosemary and the boys to believe they were safe. He focused his binoculars on the
Sea Hawk
. The sails were slashed, long strips of canvas flapping in the wind. One mast was split, the upper section swaying dangerously from side to side, ready to fall to the deck. There were coast guardsmen on board and no sign of the family. The
Sea Hawk
looked strangely macabre limping home behind the sleek cutter under a bright blue sky, through a choppy sea of white caps that shimmered silver in the sun. The wounded
Sea Hawk
with strangers sailing her home across Amiable Bay. An ominous sight, one to frighten the heart.
Did the yacht break its moorings and set itself adrift in the storm? Rosemary and the boys, had they been lost at sea, swept overboard to a watery hereafter? Byron searched the deck through the magnifying lenses, trying to find some sign of Rosemary and the boys, trying to prove to himself that he was wrong, they were still alive, maybe hurt below deck. And then he spotted the three black plastic body bags lined up neatly in the
Sea Hawk
’s stern.
‘Let me have a look, Poppy. Let me see Mamma.’
Byron never answered Cressida. He merely placed the binoculars behind his back. The tears staining his cheeks told her everything. She collapsed at his feet.
Cressida sighed. When she had decided to return to Hollihocks and live here, she had not expected the past to return to her so vividly. It was after all a very long time ago. She had not found it curious that she
and Byron had never again spoken about that day. She didn’t even find it curious now. ‘Pain is pain, Cressida, life is life, you take it as it comes and live with it until it goes away.’ Byron always made everything sound so simple.
Kane woke to the smell of bacon, something sweet baking in the oven, the strong aroma of coffee. He knew before he opened his eyes that she was not there. He missed the warmth of her body next to his. Her scent still lingered on the sheets and cushions, so did the scent of sex. Pungent and exciting. By God, she had been fantastic, fresh and new, a thrilling adventuress between the sheets. He stretched, Kane was feeling enthusiastic about her, and much more. Theirs would be a long erotic affair.
He closed his eyes for a minute and could see her laughing, lips parted, her head thrown back, his come still on her tongue, lingering in her mouth, a trickle of it on her full, voluptuous lower lip. As she placed her hands on his shoulders and caressed them, she closed her eyes and slowly swallowed, savouring every drop of his seed. He would never forget the look of delight on her face.
He opened his eyes and pulled himself up against the cushions. He was erect and throbbing for her. He felt the weight of his penis in his hand, caressed it, fondled his scrotum. How well she had mastered them. How well he had mastered her cunt, every inch of her body. They had made each other their own. He wanted both the soft, moist, warmth of her cunt and her mouth wrapped around him. The cunt kisses that squeezed hard and the mouth that sucked thrilling sensations from him.
He sensed immediately that she was not in the house. He wanted to fuck her, right then and there. She had known that was what he would have wanted on waking. Was her disappearance a message, that he could not always have what he wanted from her? The game was on. He laughed aloud and wondered, ‘My game or hers?’
Only when Kane was in the shower did he realise that he and his lady of the night had never exchanged names. He turned the shower jets off and stood in the hot steam, leaning against the wall. He ran his fingers through his hair and tried to concentrate. Could he have been so seduced by her and her erotic charms that he had never even thought to ask her name? He banged the wall with the side of his fist and turned the shower back on. It was usually his role, acting the seducer, and she
had upstaged him at it. The powerful needles of hot water stung his body and cascaded over him. Only then did he begin to wonder, as he had when he caught her breaking into his house: Who is she? Why was she burgling his house? Where had she come from? Why had she gone, leaving him without a word? Or had she?
Kane hastily left the shower, grabbed a white terrycloth robe and pulled it on. Tying its belt around his waist, he slipped his feet into a pair of moccasins and took the several steps up to the drawing-room. There he searched the sheets and tossed the cushions about, looking for a note, a scarf, any word or memento that she might have left for him. Nothing.
Then he saw it, lying on the ottoman where he had laid her down, naked and beautiful. It was so fresh in his mind: the fire dancing patterns over her body; how, for the first time, he had taken possession of her by placing his head between her legs and had licked and caressed her cunt with his tongue. It was there on their sexual altar that she had chosen to leave him a message. In lipstick printed on the sheet of an old newspaper: ‘FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD’.
Kane picked up his missive. It brought a smile to his lips. He raised an eyebrow. How clever of her to leave it there to remind him of how delicious that first taste of her had been. And witty too. The yellow brick road indeed. What a tease. He felt like the mouse being toyed with by the cat. He could not remember the last time a woman had amused him as much as his burglar. Oh, yes, he pondered, she is a burglar all right, out to steal my heart.
The lady was courageous. He liked her audacity, the puzzle she had tossed into the well-ordered life that nowadays held hardly any challenges for him. The celebrated Kane Chandler, who usually did the hooking, had swallowed a woman’s line. He collapsed on to the ottoman and began to laugh. He laughed until tears came to his eyes and he could hear his housekeeper, Mrs Tweedie, coming up the stairs from the kitchen. She was carrying his breakfast all set up on a tray. He tried to bring his laughter under control, and did so enough to tell her, ‘On the terrace, Mrs Tweedie, please.’ And then laughter took him over once more.
‘I haven’t heard you laugh like that for a very long time, Mr Kane.’
‘I don’t think I
have
laughed like this for a very long time, Mrs Tweedie,’ he told her, following her out into the sun, the sheet of newspaper with its lipstick-printed message still in his hands. Under control now, he greeted her, ‘Hello, Mrs Tweedie, it’s nice to see you. Awfully good to be home,’ and thrust a hand out to shake hers.
‘You’ve been away a long time, Mr Chandler.’
‘Almost two years.’
‘I was beginning to think you were never going to come back. It’s good to see you here.’
‘And here for the summer, the whole summer, Mrs Tweedie.’
Karen Tweedie beamed. She knew it would be hard work with lots of people coming and going, but that was just fine by her. She had her boss home, and she adored her boss. She was devoted to him and his welfare and very proud to be the one to manage his New Cobham house. She liked his loyalty too. The women could come and they could go, as they did in great numbers, but they could not interfere with his house or her running of it. They never dared stray an inch into his life where he didn’t want them or they were out in a flash. They had their place, in his bed or in his work, but none had managed to get into his head or his heart.
Karen Tweedie had worked for him and his crazy creative life for eighteen years, and it was always ‘Mrs Tweedie’ and ‘Mr Chandler’ for their first few hours together, and then they were ‘Karen’ and ‘Mr Chandler’ until he inevitably said goodbye. Their
au revoir was
always the same: a kiss on the cheek, a pat on the shoulder, a shake of her hand, and he was gone for another season of concerts and travelling around the world.
She liked the way, while on tour, he touched home by calling about the post, the house, the local gossip, from faraway places. The way he always asked after her health, her family, if there was anything she needed. She treasured the Christmas gifts, the rare card, usually with an instruction on it. She marvelled at his generosity, his extravagance, and worried about his insatiable appetite for women, his moods when his work was not going well, his depressions when he would lock himself away in his room. The endless merry go round of people, and his work, work, work. Then there were the two regular mistresses who pandered to her, confided in her their love for him, their hopes and determination to marry him, who were not so much a worry to Karen Tweedie as a source of sadness. They didn’t make him happy, and he might end up with one of them.
Men like him, who had had so many women, did they in the end finally marry out of love or loneliness? Tom cats, getting old and tired of the chase, did they settle for the best of the bunch or never stop until they found love? Were they capable of love? Was Kane Chandler? Mrs Tweedie wondered a great deal about that, and especially if in the end he would settle for the wrong woman. He was her boss but she loved him, was charmed by him just as much as everyone else was, and she cared deeply about him. He was part of her life, the closest to family an employer could ever be.
Everyone knew Kane’s housekeeper was more than his cook and cleaner, the woman who managed his house – she was his outspoken friend who protected his privacy, kept people who might disturb him or impose upon him away. Everyone in New Cobham knew the way to get to Kane Chandler was not through his business manager, his agent, his assistant, his secretary, but through Karen Tweedie, a short, plump, pretty, fifty-year-old woman from one of the powerful old Portuguese fishing families that had settled in Provincetown at the turn of the century. Married to Jack Tweedie, a born and bred New Cobhamite boat repairman, they and their four grown-up children were essential people to know. They staffed or repaired for most of the better families and businesses in the community. The Tweedie family were essential to the people of their town and the summer-cum-holiday people who counted in the community. There were various New Cobham class structures at work; in theirs, the Tweedies were royalty.
Kane saw the look on his housekeeper’s face as they walked through the drawing-room. It did look wrecked. The sheets used as dust covers were lying half on, and half off the furniture. Another sheet, the silver fox blanket and several cushions were lying on the floor in front of the fireplace. His clothes strewn over the floor told their story. He made no apologies. Over the years, Karen Tweedie had seen it all. She accepted his sexual dalliances as part of his life. Kane dragged a pair of high-backed wooden rockers that usually remained on the terrace, and had obviously been stored in the house during his absence, out into the sunshine. Sitting down in one of them, he took the tray from his housekeeper and placed it on his lap. ‘I’m ravenous,’ he told Mrs Tweedie, and smiled at her.
‘Shall I prepare another breakfast?’ she asked.
‘No, one breakfast is enough for me, thank you.’ Her way of asking if there was a woman in the house, his way of telling her there wasn’t. ‘And what a breakfast! It looks great,’ he added.
‘I’m sorry about the house not being ready for you but I didn’t expect you until late today. It’s clean and tidy except for the dust sheets and putting the terrace furniture out. Oh, and the flowers, I have those down in the kitchen ready to come up. The fridge is filled with all the things you like, and the larder and freezer. Even the bar and wine cellar are stocked. The blueberry muffins are in the oven, a chocolate cake is rising nicely.’
‘Stop fussing, Mrs Tweedie. I’m not questioning how the place looks, what you have or have not done. Now sit down and tell me, are you well? You look well. And the family? What’s your news? New Cobham’s latest scandal?’
Kane listened while he ate ravenously: freshly smoked haddock and poached eggs, Mrs Tweedie’s special home fried potatoes, slices of brioche toasted and spread with lashings of butter and vintage English marmalade made from blood red oranges, cups of hot, black, special blend Brazilian coffee. He indulged himself in the gossip of a world far removed from his own, one he picked up on and amused himself with whenever he came home. He liked being, no matter how briefly, a part of New Cobham life. He slipped into it with ease. And New Cobham liked him. He and Byron Vine had always been the town’s favourite sons. They bathed in the light of Kane’s accomplishments but were reserved in their admiration and awe, which suited him. He had it all organised the way he liked it in New Cobham, just as he did in the other departments of his life. Kane Chandler ran his life for Kane Chandler.
He sent Mrs Tweedie downstairs to the kitchen for a second cup for herself and a fresh pot of hot coffee and he fetched a table and two chairs that were usually on the balcony when he was in residence. When she returned he was standing at the far end of the terrace, in his hand the message Cressida had left him. He was looking out across the water, at some distant place in his imagination.
‘Oh, you’ve been down to the storeroom. You didn’t have to do that,’ the housekeeper told him, placing the newly laid tray: two fresh cups and saucers, a plate of hot muffins just out of the oven, and a bowl of clotted cream, a pot of her home made strawberry jam, on the table.
‘It wasn’t much of an effort, Mrs Tweedie.’
‘Well, you don’t have to do any more. I’ve got Jim coming just about now to bring up the terrace furniture.’
‘How is Jim? You’ve got him on call while I’m here, I hope? We’ll be needing him. There are a great many places I want to go, things I want to do, people up and down the coast I want to see. And some serious sailing. A great deal of that is on my agenda. I have a yen for the ocean, to be riding it, swimming it, fishing it, and I want Jim to organise for me. It won’t be all fun and games though, so be warned. There’ll be work in progress and several of my colleagues here, a fair number of guests coming and going.’
Housekeeper and employer took their seats opposite each other and Kane filled the cups, and offered one to her. Not unkindly, she thought, Aren’t there always? but only said, ‘Yes, he’s available and exclusively yours, nothing has changed.’
‘Karen.’ Both employer and housekeeper were aware and relieved that the first phase of formality between them was over.
‘Yes, Mr Chandler?’
‘We had a break-in last night.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t get alarmed, nothing was stolen. I caught the burglar red handed.’
‘How did he get in? Did you call the police?’
‘With a key, and no, I didn’t call the police. And
he
was a very beautiful and clever
she
.’
‘Oh, now I know why you didn’t call the police.’
‘I did intend to.’
‘But, Mr Chandler …’
‘I got distracted.’
‘Oh, you do take chances,’ she told him, looking very annoyed with him, and slapped the table with her hand. ‘And the key … this is serious. Where did she get the key? We have to call the police and change the locks. Did she have a gun?’
‘Well, not a firearm,’ he told Karen, amused to think of his burglar having used an even more lethal weapon on him: her wily feminine charm, her sexual hunger for him, her erotic expertise. Kane could barely hide his amusement at Karen’s question. ‘No, no police, not yet anyway. The key I haven’t had a chance to check out, but I think from our hiding place behind the shingle.’
Karen returned empty handed from her inspection of the place in question, and sat down again, stunned, feeling that the house had been violated. Kane refilled her cup. She took a sip and asked, ‘How could she have found that hiding place? Only you and I know where we hide the key, how to get to it. Not even Jim knows another key exists, and he’s been your handyman and driver for fifteen years. Why, you’ve had that secret place since before I even came to work for you. I’ve never told a soul, not even my husband.’
‘Don’t look at me that way, Karen. I’ve never told anyone.’