The Questing Heart

Elizabeth Ashton

"Aren't you going to kiss me good night?"
Clare blurted out the words awkwardly. His first reaction of surprise was not entirely flattering.
Clare's lifelong ambition was to write a romantic novel--but how could she when she had absolutely no experience of love or romance? Then she met Christopher Raines, a famous, sophisticated playwright, romantic and experienced.
Suddenly her heart began to pound in panic. What on earth had made her think she could handle the situation her words had provoked!

O
N
Tuesdays and Fridays Monica Cullingford was 'at home' in the evenings. On Wednesdays she was 'at home' in the afternoons. The afternoon reception was for ladies, many of them her fans, for even on the Riviera her books were not unknown, the evening ones were accepted as being for men only. Monica called them her
soirees
and considered herself to be a modern Madame de Stael or similar famous literary hostess.

When Clare Underwood was engaged as secretary by this popular author of romantic fiction, she was told that her evenings would be free bar these two, when she would be expected to be on duty, 'To pass things round and make yourself useful.' Clare was thrilled, hoping to meet some famous people, but she was sadly disappointed by the actuality. For the motley collection of gentlemen who were regular guests at these gatherings, drawn if truth were told more by the lavish supply of free drinks and free smokes than Monica's company, were seedy hangers-on, failures and aspirants to fame without much hope of success. Occasionally someone distinguished was inveigled into putting in an appearance, but he never came again. All Monica expected in return for her hospitality was rapt attention while she discoursed, and plenty of flattery. Clare was relegated to the background, to superintend the supply of refreshment and collect and replace dirty glasses with clean ones.

Clare called the regulars, who turned up unfailingly twice a week, Monica's tame tabbies. They were unknown writers and poets, who were unlikely ever to be discovered. There was the Ginger Tabby, a gaunt Englishman, Eustace Forbes, who was paid an allowance by a wealthy family to stay abroad as he was something of an embarrassment to it. He had a head of flaming hair and a red beard, and fancied he resembled the late George Bernard Shaw. Unfortunately the plays he wrote were far from Shavian quality. There was the Grey Tabby, a sleek Frenchman with polished manners and grey hair, a Monsieur Marcel Durand, who seemed fairly affluent though the source of his income was questionable. The Starved Tabby was a thin hollow-eyed poet who subsisted no one knew how, and several others, all alike in their fawning approach to their hostess and their greed for the comforts she provided; also like the cats to which Clare likened them, they were all capable of scratching if their vanity was punctured. They paid Clare very little attention, and for that she was grateful, as she disliked them all intensely. Monica had indicated that she wished her secretary to appear inconspicuous, she did not want a female rival, and Clare dressed accordingly in plain unbecoming evening dresses, either grey or brown, with V necks and three-quarter sleeves; her brown hair drawn back from her wide low brow and no trace of makeup.

The job had its compensations; she was not hard- worked; Monica dictated several thousand words each morning, which Clare transcribed in the afternoons, and she did not work at all at weekends. She left her correspondence to Clare, but there was not a great deal of it, so that Clare had plenty of time for her own pursuits. What had tempted her to apply for the position was its locale. Monica rented a villa between Monte Carlo and Nice on the French Riviera, and after the Manchester suburb where she had been born and bred, Clare felt she was in paradise. The Mediterranean Sea, the sub-tropical vegetation, the glamour of nearby Monaco delighted her. This environment had figured as a background in the bulk of Monica's torrid books. Clare had her own ambitions in this direction. Monica's novels were not literary, she had a facile style and a gift for dialogue. Clare saw no reason why she should not be able to imitate her, and in the privacy of her bedroom her own book was taking shape, but she was under one great disadvantage. Love with a capital L was the main ingredient of this sort of literature, and Clare had had no experience of the great emotion. Brought up in a household where money was scarce and making a living the main preoccupation, she had gone out to work as an office girl as soon as she could leave school, and had taken a commercial course in the evenings as a means of improving her position. At home, her mother, who was not strong, expected her to help with the chores. Eventually she graduated to being a stenographer, then, weary of her grim and grimy surroundings, had sought for a more interesting occupation. She was twenty when she landed the job with Monica in answer to an advertisement she had seen in the paper and she could hardly believe her good luck when she got it. That Monica had engaged her from among a host of applicants because she appeared quiet, plain and insignificant had not occurred to her. Monica did not want any competition from a glamorous secretary, and most of the other girls had made the mistake of dressing and making up too extravagantly.

Clare had felt some qualms about leaving her parents as she was their only child, and her mother loudly bewailed what she termed her selfishness, but her father spoke up for her.

'Nay, mother, let the lass go,' he told his wife. 'She's a good girl and deserves some reward for all her hard work. She'll come back when she's had enough of foreign parts.'

So Clare went to the Riviera, which she had often read about and never hoped to see.

Monica Cullingford was a big handsome woman on the wrong side of forty, who dressed like a teenager in the belief that she looked twenty. She was good-natured, indolent and very vain, both of her appearance and her achievements. The latter were not negligible—fifty-odd novels with a wide circulation. She had been married, but nobody knew what had become of her husband. Unkind people said he had run away to avoid being smothered by her overwhelming femininity. Clare often wondered how much of the rapture she described so vividly in her books she had actually experienced. At least she had had a man, while Clare had always been working too hard, and was too unprepossessing to have attracted even passing notice. This fact worried her—not that she particularly desired masculine attention, she had rather a contempt for boys of her own age and considered she was too practical to crave for romance, but if she were to succeed as a romantic writer she felt she must somehow or other acquire first-hand knowledge of her subject. None of the tabbies were promising material and they knew better than to glance in Clare's direction. They sat in a charmed circle around Monica, who reclined on a sofa, on the armchairs and couches that were arranged to face her. The table with the drinks and sandwiches was in an alcove behind them, and that was Clare's station. Occasionally she circulated to supply their needs, but she did not speak to them. Monsieur Durand had once tried to help her, coming to the table and paying her some compliments, but Monica soon checked that.

'Do not leave your chair,
mon ami,
Clare will attend to your requirements. That's what she's here for.'

He decided Clare must be some sort of superior maid.

Occasionally someone brought a younger and more interesting-looking man, but he did not stop long. The tabbies might endure Monica's perorations for what they got out of her, but they were not amusing for a man of spirit.

Came the night of the Tiger. Pursuing her simile of cats, Clare called him that, and the description was not farfetched, for there was something feline about Christopher Raines in his swift supple movements, and he had tiger colouring, dark hair, brown skin and peculiar cat's eyes, a mingling of gold and green, which might be termed hazel except that they glowed amber when he was excited. Above average height, lean and lithe, he had a habit of prowling about the room he was in while he was talking, only Monica's cluttered Salon, as she liked to call it, had not much space for prowling. Eustace Forbes introduced him.

'Chris is a colleague of mine, Madame Monique'—they all called her that. 'Another playwright searching for material. This lovely coast promotes inspiration, and so, dear lady, do you.'

Chris stared with undisguised astonishment at his hostess. It was a warm evening in late May, and Monica was wearing a white dress appliqued with a herbaceous border of bright flowers rising from its hem, which freely displayed her stout arms and neck. Her luxurious black hair was loose and crowned with a wreath of artificial flowers. A mass of beads were hung around her neck, and bangles jingled on her arms as she extended a plump white hand. She batted her false eyelashes, as she murmured:

'Enchante, mon ami.'

Since she had come to five in France, Monica affected French phrases.

Chris, looking slightly taken aback, shook the welcoming hand. Clare was sure his hostess had expected him to kiss it. He backed away as if from royalty.

'Sit down,' Monica commanded, indicating a chair directly in front of her. 'Clare, our guest would like a drink. Whisky?'

'That would be very acceptable,' Chris murmured, subsiding into the low easy chair and staring in fascination at his hostess. She, certain he was admiring her, simpered.

'I knew it, you look a whisky man,' she cooed.

Clare said crisply, 'Neat?'

He looked round and their eyes met. She saw the barely concealed amusement in his and had to repress an answering smile.

'With soda, please,' he told her. 'I'll come and indicate how much.'

He sprang to his feet, no mean effort considering the depth of the chair from which he had arisen, and came to stand beside her.

'Make it strong,' he whispered. 'I think I shall need a stimulant.'

Again their eyes met and she saw his were sparkling with wicked merriment, but she did not respond, feeling it was disloyal to laugh at her employer, though Monica did lay herself out to ridicule.

'Flatter her, that's what pleases her,' she murmured as she handed him his glass. 'Mention her last novel.'

'But I've never read it, what's it called?'

'What are you two whispering about?' came Monica's strident voice. 'Isn't it the right brand or something?'

The tabbies all turned in their chairs to regard the couple in the alcove. Then Eustace said something facetious and under cover of the laugh that followed, Clare hissed:

'Passion Fruit
, that's her latest. Go back to your chair.'

He hunched his shoulders in mock alarm, giving her an impish glance, and retreated, but he did not return to the low chair. Instead he perched himself on the arm of a sofa about midway between Clare and the deity on the couch. From this position he could see Clare in her alcove as well as his hostess. Clare watched him a little wistfully. She would have liked to be able to converse with him, he would be fun, very different from the sycophants hanging upon Monica's words.

Monica too was studying her guest with avid eyes. She rarely received anyone so attractive. Apparently he was another struggling genius, for he was casually clad in a thin sweater and slacks, but unlike the others he looked as if he might win success.

'So you're a writer too?' Monica asked. 'Might one enquire what you've written?'

'Oh, just one or two playlets,' Chris replied, looking modest.

'You're wasting your time,' Monica proclaimed. 'There's no money in plays unless you're extraordinarily lucky and you have to have sponsors and backers, and if you do get one acted the critics will tear it to pieces. They're suspicious of new talent.'

'Is that so?' Christopher opened his eyes very wide as if a new viewpoint had been presented to him, while Clare wondered if Monica knew what she was talking about.

'Why don't you try a novel?' Monica went on.

'I leave that to you,' Chris told her. 'After reading'—he glanced at Clare—'
Passion Fruit
I realised my limitations, I couldn't aspire to such heights.'

Clare knew Monica was too obtuse to detect the note of mockery underlying his words, but after all, the novelist was a success and he had no right to jeer at her.

'I'm not saying you'd be in my glass,' Monica admitted. . 'But there are many lesser writers who do quite well. I always try to encourage struggling talent, but most of it tries to be too intense. The public will only read what entertains it, and I must say that in my case it has shown great discernment. Marcel insists I deserve every penny I earn.' She looked coyly at the Grey Tabby.

'She has given pleasure to countless millions,' Monsieur Durand declared enthusiastically.

'I'm sure she has,' Chris agreed. 'The majority of people aren't critical and are easily amused.'

Monica looked as if she had not quite understood what he had said, and the poet intervened hastily:

'It takes vast skill to deliver the goods.'

'You must lead a very exacting life,' Christopher said suavely.