The Likes of Us (60 page)

‘It's only me, Mrs Nugent. Don't he alarmed. You were only dreaming.' He knelt beside the bed now, one hand hold­ing her hand that was free of the covers. With his other hand he found himself softly caressing her brow, then her cheek. ‘You're all right now. Don't be afraid. You're safe with me.' There were tears on her face. He cupped her cheek and ran his thumb in the moisture under her eyes. She lay still now, allowing herself to be soothed.

Jordan raised himself and sat on the bed. She shifted herself to make room for him as she felt his weight settle. He began again to caress the pale shape of her face. Her hair was damp on her forehead.

‘You're quite safe,' Jordan said. ‘You're perfectly safe with me. I won't let them hurt you.'

In a few moments more her breathing was steady and deep. He wondered if she had really awakened.

 

He found her sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea and smoking a cigarette.

‘Good morning.'

‘Hullo. You're up early. I thought you were going to sleep in a bit.'

‘I forgot to reset my radio. It woke me at the usual time.' He got a cup from the cupboard and reached for the teapot, motioning her to stay seated as she made to rise. ‘I can do it.' He nodded towards the thin plume of smoke which rose lazily in the still air beyond the tall creosoted fence of his neighbour's garden. ‘It must be going to be a nice day.'

‘D'you think so?'

‘He always makes a fire on the nicest days.' He joined her at the table. ‘I thought you might have slept longer yourself.'

She drew on the cigarette. Her hand trembled slightly as she tapped ash into the glass tray.

‘Did you come into my room last night?'

‘Don't you remember?'

‘Somebody was touching me.'

‘You were dreaming. You woke me up.'

‘I took a sleeping pill. I didn't know where I was.'

‘You were frightened.'

‘I must have been.'

‘What was it about, can you remember?'

‘Not much now.' She frowned. ‘I was here on me own. It was different, somehow. Somebody came.'

‘Who was it?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Do you often have nightmares?'

‘I dream sometimes, but not like that. I haven't had one like that since I was a little lass. I mean as bad. They used to have to take me into bed between them.'

‘Your father and mother?'

‘Yes
.
'

‘Were you an only child?'

‘Yes
.
'

‘Are they still alive?'

‘Me mother died, after me dad ran off. I never heard what happened to him.' Jordan drank tea and waited, saying nothing. ‘Do you want some breakfast?'

‘There's no hurry.'

‘Have you got any family?'

‘My parents are dead. I have a married sister in New Zealand and a brother living in London,' said Jordan.

‘Do you ever see them?'

‘My brother came up for my wife's funeral. I hadn't seen him for some time before that.'

‘You're not close, then?'

‘No.'

‘I think that's a shame. I pined for brothers and sisters when I was a kid.'

‘You've got your step-brother.'

‘Well... He's not really me step-brother. I just call him that. It's what he calls himself.'

‘I don't follow.'

‘Me mam was never married to his dad.'

‘You all lived together?'

‘For a year or two. Then me mam died. An auntie took me in. I never saw Harry again till we were both grown up. He come looking for me, one time. “Don't you know me?” he says. “It's your step-brother.” I didn't know him from Adam at first. Then I begun to see it was him. He always calls me his step-sister. I don't mind, if that's what he wants. It makes things look a bit more respectable, I suppose, when he turns up and wants a place to sleep for a week or two. Not that that matters much. Nobody cares nowadays, do they?'

‘Apparently not.'

‘Does it bother you, then, that sort of thing?'

‘Oh, I always say people can do what they like, as long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.'

‘You what?'

‘Just an old joke. What did Harry think of
you coming to live in here?'

‘I don't really know.'

‘Didn't he say anything? Did he think it was a good move or a bad one?'

‘He said it was up to me.'

‘Do you think you can still settle, after last night?'

‘…Nothing happened last night, did it?'

‘You were crying out in your sleep. I came in and calmed you.'

‘Was that all?'

‘Can't you remember?'

‘I must have had another dream, after you'd gone.'

‘What about? Her cup was empty. He reached for the pot and refilled it for her, not wanting her to start moving about. ‘What was your other dream, then? You weren't frightened again, were you?'

‘No.' She shook her head and lowered her face, one hand to her forehead.

‘Do you mean I was in it?'

‘It's too silly…

‘Silly?'

‘Embarrassing. It's best not talked about.'

‘But you thought it might actually have happened. Is that what you mean?'

‘Not really.'

‘It was vivid, though. It must have been.'

‘I told you, I'd taken a sleeping pill. I didn't know where I was.'

‘If it wasn't frightening, was it curious or pleasant, or what?'

‘Let's forget about it.'

‘You brought it up.'

‘I just wanted to be sure.'

‘I don't know why you want to make such a mystery of it,' Jordan said. She lit another cigarette. He noticed that her hands were still unsteady. ‘You smoke too much.'

‘Only sometimes. Do you still want me to stop on here?'

‘You haven't changed your mind, have you?'

‘I was still making it up.'

‘Is there anything I can do to help you decide to stay? I obviously can't guarantee to keep out of your dreams.'

‘You won't get it out of me that way.'

Emboldened by her small smile, Jordan said, ‘Well, at least tell me this much: did I seem to enjoy being in your dream?'

She got up. ‘Shall I make another pot of tea or are you ready to go on to coffee?'

‘Make which ever you prefer.'

‘Say which you want.'

‘I'll leave it to you.'

‘You don't sulk, do you?' she asked. ‘I can't abide people who sulk.'

‘I don't sulk; I show my displeasure.'

‘I wish I'd never mentioned it.'

‘But you wanted to be sure.'

‘There's no need for sarcasm, either.'

‘Well, what did you want to be sure of, for heaven's sake?'

She banged down the full kettle, slipped home the plug, closed the switch.

‘If you must know,' she said, ‘I didn't want to spend the next couple of
weeks wondering if
I might be pregnant.'

‘You mean to say,' Jordan said, on his feet now, ‘that you think I'm the kind of man who'd creep into your bed and take advantage of you while you didn't know what you were doing?'

‘What are you getting mad about?'

‘I'm wondering what sort of a man you take me for.'

‘You are a man, aren't you?'

‘What does that mean?'

‘If I invited you into my bed, what would you do?'

Jordan turned to the window. His neighbour's garden fire was burning well now. A sudden spring of breeze fanned out the smoke before lifting it over a nearby roof. He was astounded that things between them had come so far so fast. It was not the way he'd imagined it at all.

‘Can't you answer?'

He tried to keep his voice cool and level. ‘What makes you think I'm interested in you that way?'

‘If you're not, you're not. But I want to know. I want to know if that's what you had in mind when you asked me to come and live here.' When he didn't speak, she went on, ‘I reckon I've a right to know that much.'

‘Which is the answer that will keep you here?' Jordan asked.

‘Try telling the truth.'

Whatever happened now, Jordan thought, things could never be the same. He felt like a small boy caught in some shameful action. Yet if he denied what he wanted he was sure she would feel obliged to go.

‘I want to make love to you,' he said.

She was silent for so long he thought she must have left the room. He forced himself round.

‘Did you hear me?'

‘I heard you.' She was pouring boiling water into the teapot. ‘You should have said. You should have told me.'

He stepped towards her and put his hands on her shoulders from behind.

‘Audrey…' But she turned and brushed past him to set the teapot down on the table.

‘Don't be in such a rush,' she said. ‘It's time I made your breakfast. And then there's one or two things we have to talk about.'

 

‘I'm scared stiff of getting pregnant,' she was saying to him a long time later that day.

‘You won't.'

‘You can get something, can't you?'

‘Tomorrow.'

Reminded by his neighbour's activity, he had spent most of the daylight hours in his neglected garden, keeping away from her and trying through physical labour to curb his mounting excitement.

But images of her came again and again to fill his mind until, by nightfall, he was almost sick with longing and could only toy with his evening meal.

‘You should have said. You should have told me.'

‘I didn't know how. I didn't want to frighten you off. I hoped you'd come to the idea in your own time.'

‘I don't know what it is you see in me.'

‘I'd like to look after you. Do things for you. Nice things.'

‘What for? I'm not your sort.'

‘Perhaps that's why.'

‘You're a gentleman. I'm nothing.'

‘You're talking rubbish.'

‘You know next to nothing about me.'

‘You're what you let yourself be.'

‘Seems to me I've nearly always been forced.'

‘I won't force you,' Jordan said.

‘No, you'd kill me with kindness.'

‘Would I?'

‘You will. If I let you.'

‘Promise me,' she was saying to him now. ‘Promise you won't go any further than I let you.'

‘I promise.'

Her mouth moved against his as her tongue probed. She tasted faintly of tobacco smoke. He shuddered as her hand explored his groin. When his own hand slid down across her flat belly she took it firmly and led it to her breasts. He clutched them and gasped as the spasm started in him.

 

The papers were needed for the meeting. Mrs Perrins said she had searched high and low but could not find them. ‘You took them home with you, didn't you? I remember you saying you'd take them home to read in peace.'

‘I thought I'd brought them back.'

He was slipping. He forgot things. Yet he felt in bounding physical condition. She had noticed the difference in him and he had caught her once or twice looking at him in a mildly speculative way.

He had just returned to his office after lunch. The meeting was called for three-thirty.

‘I shall have to go back and look for them,' he said. ‘We can't manage without them, that's for sure.'

He left the car in the street and walked up the drive. The house was afternoon-still. Audrey got most of her work done in the morning. He supposed she could have gone out, though he knew she quite often took a nap after lunch.

He went straight upstairs, his feet moving lightly, two steps at a time. Her door stood ajar. It opened without a sound over the carpet as he stepped round. She was asleep, the sheet down to her hips exposing the long curve of her naked back. Jordan thought the man lying on the other side of her was sleeping too until, in the second before the closing door cut off his view, a head lifted off the pillow and Harry's eyes looked directly into his.

The telephone in the hall began to ring as he got to the top of the stairs. He was down and reaching for it when he heard movement on the landing and she came into view, drawing a wrap about her. She paused for a second as she saw him and he noticed that she could not resist a quick look behind her.

‘What are you–?'

There was something in her face beyond instinctive apprehension: something he couldn't in his present state define, and which was gone almost as soon as he had discerned it.

He waved her to silence, the receiver filled with the effusive apologies of his secretary. He listened, said a couple of words and hung up.

‘How long have you been back?' Her voice was lifted, unusually carrying.

‘I've just come in.'

‘Is there something wrong?'

‘I came to get some papers, but my secretary's found them.'

‘I was lying down.'

‘So I gathered.'

He felt suddenly as though he would fall. She took a step towards him as his hand groped for the wooden arm of the chair beside the telephone. He sat down heavily, bending forward to thrust his head between his knees.

‘What's the matter? Aren't you well?'

‘I'll be all right.'

‘You look as pale as lard,' she said when he straightened up. Her hands fluttered at the stuff of the wrap, drawing it closer, smoothing it down.

‘I just went dizzy for a second, that's all.'

‘Shouldn't you rest for a while?'

She had to say that, he thought. She couldn't avoid saying that.

‘I've got an important meeting. They can't hold it without me.' He got up and stood very still for a moment, checking his balance.