Authors: Unknown
Getting up was harder. She slipped several times, and she couldn’t comprehend how a man could do this, leave her like this. Pitiless. Wolfish. That was right. If Roz would let her she could write such a story about him.
By the time she reached the top of the hill she was sweating in spite of the cold from the strain and the effort. She didn’t look up until she was at the top. She had climbed doggedly, head down against the falling snow, and it couldn’t have taken as long as she’d thought because although Duncan Keld was walking steadily he wasn’t all that far away. She scowled at his dark retreating figure and stumbled after him, and the heat she had generated died quickly so that long before she reached the lodge her face was numb with cold and her eyes were streaming.
She wouldn’t put it past him to lock the doors. She wouldn’t put anything past him, he was a monster. But the door opened although the frozen iron latch seemed to burn her fingers, and he was standing in front of the fire with his back towards the door and her.
He didn’t look round, and Pattie let the stiff heavy coat fall to the ground and went over to the fire, as close as she dared without setting herself alight, saying ‘Sorry, I’m sure you’d have preferred me to lie down and die out there, but it looks as though you’re stuck with me.’
‘How long before your friends come looking for you?’ She shrugged, and he said sharply, ‘Somebody’s going to miss you, aren’t they?’
‘Shouldn’t think so.’ She moved back a little out of the blistering heat into a gentler warmth, and told him, ‘Nobody knows I’m here.’
'What?
‘I’m supposed to be on holiday.’ In a warped way she was almost enjoying this. ‘But I was landed with trying to get this interview and I just thought I’d come up here.’
‘Just like that?’ She went on looking into the fire, and shrugged again. ‘You’re an impulsive idiot, aren’t you?’ There was no tolerance in the way he said that, only a fierce impatience. Nobody had ever called her impulsive before, but she was calling herself all kinds of idiot, and she muttered,
‘I didn’t know it was going to start snowing.’
‘Everyone else in the county did. Don’t you ever listen to weather forecasts?’
‘No.’ She wished now that she had turned on the radio. She wished a lot of things, all connected with being somewhere else.
‘Offhand,’ growled Duncan Keld, ‘I can’t think of anyone I’d less rather be snowed in with.’
‘Snap,’ she said, and she meant it every bit as much as he did.
‘I’m here to work and I’m damned if you’re going to stop me.’ He sounded as though she would be vying for his attention, and she said contemptuously,
‘I don’t want to stop you. I don’t want anything from you.’
‘Don’t get uppity with me, Miss Ross. You want my fire and my roof, but I’m very tempted to cart you as far away from here as I can and dump you.’ He looked capable of it. There was a wolfish gleam in his eyes, and Pattie sensed near-violence and said nothing. ‘While you are here just sit still and shut up, and keep out of my way.’ She had been kneeling in front of the fire, and he bent over her with so much menace in his face that she nodded agreeing to his terms without words. ‘I work over there.’ He indicated a big table some distance away. ‘You can stay here.’
By the fire. That was something, being allocated a place by the hearth. At least she wouldn’t freeze to death. But she couldn’t sit here mute all day long, so she ventured quite meekly, ‘Could I do the cooking?’
‘Leave the food alone.’ He gave her a final glare of exasperation. ‘Leave everything alone,' and he went off into the kitchen.
Pattie was scared to move. If she got in his way— if she went into the kitchen, for instance—he would probably shove her off her feet. He only needed the slightest excuse. He was a violent man, she remembered poor little Willie’s black eye, and wondered again what had possessed her into coming up here and getting herself caged with a tiger. He was a jungle all to himself, and she found she was clutching her charm so tightly that she could feel the pull of the chain through the collar of her sweater.
‘Somebody’s going to miss -you, aren’t they?’ Duncan Keld had just asked her, and nobody was. Michael might phone her apartment, but when he got no reply he would presume she was out. If she walked out of his life for ever he wouldn’t miss her for long. Nobody would. She turned the charm over, tracing the happiness symbol with her forefinger, and wondered if she had ever been happy. I miss you, she thought. In all these years I’ve never stopped missing you.
Duncan Keld came out of the kitchen with a tray holding a mug, a flask, and a plateful of sandwiches, and without a glance at Pattie settled himself at the big table. She watched him, she had nothing else to do, as he took papers out of drawers and a file and a typewriter from another chair.
She envied him, with all the equipment for his work. She would have liked a few sheets of paper and the loan of a ballpoint. She could have written some letters if nothing else. As soon as he seemed immersed in what he was doing, which was almost at once, she got up very quietly and tiptoed as softly as she could in boots into the kitchen.
There were three cupboards in here, and she opened the tall narrow one. It was like opening a mummy case, seeing the long tin bath standing up inside. Pattie could imagine that in front of a roaring fire. You would have to heat the water to fill it and then empty it again, but if she could be sure of privacy she would be tempted to try it. Duncan Keld could hardly have a bath while she was here, unless he sent her upstairs, and to her mental pictures of the steaming bath was added the figure of a man, dark and stark and pouring water over himself as he had done over his head in the kitchen this morning. He’d be hairy all over, she decided with a shudder, revoltingly hirsute; and she shut the door sharply, shutting off that image.
Another small cupboard had first aid ointments and lotions and a bottle of aspirins. He might never be ill, that’s what he’d said, but this would be useful in minor mishaps, and if she couldn’t sleep tonight she would take a couple of aspirins.
The third cupboard was the food cupboard, and well stocked with tins and packages, eggs, bacon and several loaves of brown bread. Most of it convenience food, but he wouldn’t go hungry if he stayed his month out, and he could have let her prepare the meals. She could have goulashed the corned beef and pepped up the soups. She wasn’t hungry. On the contrary, she felt an aversion to food that made her queasy at the sight of it, even tinned. She took one plain water biscuit and nibbled a little, but her mouth tasted sour because she hadn’t been able to clean her teeth.
But a cup of tea or coffee would be different, and there was still hot water in the kettle. If Duncan Keld had just used the stove it had to be safe, so she lit one of the burners and boiled up the water and found a tea bag, then made tea in a blue enamel mug adding sugar and powdered milk.
There wasn’t much to see through the narrow little window through which she had made her entry yesterday. The snow was like a white lace curtain across it, only you couldn’t draw this curtain. She had been glad enough to get in yesterday, that fire had saved her life. He must have been here earlier to light the fire. Someone must have taken him away and brought him back again and when they brought him back said, ‘Goodbye, see you in four weeks’ time.’
If she had been awake instead of sleeping the sleep of exhaustion and brandy she could have hitched a lift, but now she was stuck until the snow went away, or somebody found her car and started looking for her. They’d come here first. This was the nearest house, the only house for miles.
‘Somebody come looking for me,’ she prayed, and remembered standing at other windows whispering a similar prayer, ‘Please come. You told me to wait and be good. Oh, please come back!’
She was getting lightheaded. She had to keep her head because that was a brutal man in there. If she broke down she’d get no pity from him. She took what was left of the hot tea back to the fire
—
it was freezing in the kitchen
—
and drank it to the dregs. Then she picked up the sheepskin coat she had worn from the floor, just inside the front door, where she’d dropped it.
The snow had melted on it, making a small pool on the flagstones, and she had been a fool not to shake it before she dumped it, she could be wanting it again. She draped it over a chair, and put another log on the fire.
Duncan Keld had told her to leave the food alone. She didn’t want his food, but the fire was another matter. If he stopped her building up the fire she would go berserk. There were all those logs outside so he would have no excuse, and she sat on the goatskin rug with her back to the easy chair, watching the sparks go up the chimney.
After a while her head began to nod. She pushed a cushion up against the chair arm, rested her head on it and closed her eyes and dozed. She was tired. The trek out to the car had been strenuous, and the warmth of the fire and the rhythm of a tapping typewriter lulled her. She didn’t know how long she slept, but when she opened her eyes she heard this deep slow sexy voice.
She knew at once where she was. Her heart sank and she closed her eyes again. He wasn’t talking to her. He was speaking on a tape recorder, describing something mechanical. Something to do with a boat maybe, and she lay still and listened. She decided that when he wasn’t growling or snarling, he had an attractive voice. Some women might describe it as sexy and wonder how it would sound if he said something very personal and intimate, and just for them.
Pattie shocked herself rigid with that thought and jerked herself upright. There wasn’t even a book about that she could see. Maybe there was in cupboards or drawers, but how would Duncan Keld react if she started wandering around, poking into corners?
He had turned off the tape recorder now and he was typing again, and she coughed and said, ‘Excuse me.’
No reply, no sign that he had heard her, so she asked, ‘Are you actually blocking me out or just pretending to?’ Still he didn’t seem to hear, although of course he knew she was speaking to him, and she began to get extremely irritated. He was such a lout, so uncouth. ‘Oh, the concentration of the man!’ she shrilled with phoney enthusiasm. ‘I think it’s wonderful! Oh, I envy you that. I’ve been sitting here and trying to think myself somewhere else, but I can’t. I have this lovely picture in my head of being somewhere I can clean my teeth, like back home, but all the time I know I’m here.’
He turned in his chair then, gave her a look of flat dislike and said, ‘One more word and you’re out.’
‘It does hear,’ she mocked. ‘Just testing.’ But as he got to his feet she added hastily, ‘I’ll be quiet,’ because although she was sure he wouldn’t carry out his threat she was surprised how relieved she felt when he sat down again.
Her bruises were aching. They had been all day. She had tender patches all over, particularly where the safety-belt had held her, saving her from worse. But now she seemed to be aching more than ever, and she remembered the lotion for sprains in the first aid cupboard in the kitchen and wondered if that would help.
With nothing else to do except sit here she could feel each throbbing spot, and she would have to help herself because nobody else was going to. She wished she could have stayed by the fire to administer the treatment, but she would have as soon stripped off in the middle of Piccadilly Circus as in front of Duncan Keld, even if he was blocking her out.
She nearly changed her mind when she stood in the cold kitchen, and as she peeled off her sweater she felt her skin turn clammy. She slithered out of the straps of her slip and wriggled that down to her waist, then started checking and was surprised that she didn’t look worse. Perhaps the bruises hadn’t come out yet. She felt that she ought to be black and blue, but perhaps her solarium suntan was masking the damage.
She wrinkled her nose at the pungent smell of the lotion. If it got on her clothes she had no chance of washing them, and she couldn’t bear anything soiled near her skin. Her general feeling of grubbiness was already becoming a phobia with her, and she unhooked her bra and dropped it on the table, then very gingerly began to dab her rib-cage where it hurt.
She screamed, ‘Get out!’ as the door opened, and the lotion went spinning as she flung her arms convulsively across her breasts, but she could have been fully dressed for all the effect it had on him.
‘If you get pneumonia,’ he said, ‘don’t expect me to nurse you,’ and he went to the cupboard and took out a packet of biscuits, then walked out without giving her a second look.
By this time she was scrabbling back into her slip, and even after the door was closed she went on dressing as fast as though he was in here staring at her.
Everything stank of the lotion. The bottle was broken and acrid fumes were filling the room. She shouldn’t have panicked like that. Duncan Keld must have seen many a topless girl in his life, both privately and publicly, and her figure was good. She had firm pretty breasts and the last thing in the world she wanted was to turn him on, but it was a sort of insult that he hadn’t turned a hair.
She finished dressing, pulling her jumper well down over her hips, and buttoning her jacket, then she set about cleaning up the mess, sweeping the glass splinters with a broom on to a shovel and tipping them into a plastic bin that stood by the door. She got a bowl of snow to swab the floor, and another bowl to wash her hands, and by then her fingers were blue and completely without feeling. When she got back to the fire they throbbed almost unbearably for what seemed like ages. A lot of good all that had done for her health, and she sat staring broodingly into the flames.
Darkness crept into the room almost unnoticed so far as Pattie was concerned. She realised that the shadows were thickening at her back when Duncan Keld got up and lit the lamp. But he kept it on the table where he was working, so she only got a fringe benefit, although the diffused glow could have been quite pleasant, in other circumstances and other company.
The house, Wuthering Heights, must have been rather like this lodge. Perhaps she could write an article about that, about being snowed in with Heathcliff. She could remember the story, of course, it had been one of her favourite books when she was young, and she looked across at the man sitting in the lamplight, and phrases ran through her mind . . . ‘The cheeks were sallow and half covered in black whiskers’ . . . He hadn’t shaved today, he probably didn’t while he was up here on his own and he wasn’t going to bother for her. Another day or two and they would look like a couple of tramps. More than another two days, she thought, and I shall go crazy .. . ‘The eyes deep set and singular.’ He looked up, turned his head slightly, saw her eyes on him and scowled. ‘A half-civilised ferocity’. . . Pattie recalled, and smiled at the aptness of that, amused by the little game she was playing, when he said, ‘I hope you’re not writing this article of yours in your head.’