Lightning Encounter (2 page)

‘I've thought for a long time you should go home and learn some gentle, civilised ways.' Despite their years of voluntary exile they'd always thought of England as that. ‘You're old enough to cast off on your own now. Be strong, be independent. Be my daughter.'
Which
did her out of a good old-fashioned cry. His daughter would never indulge in foolish tears, but would stoically accept that a chapter of her life had come to a close. A chapter that had been made up of ecstasy and pain, joy and frustration. She would allow herself a wistful regret, favourably renaming the uneventful, boring moments, now calling them ‘those beautiful, peaceful days' before turning to the new chapter with eagerness and gusto. That was the message her head relayed, there was only one thing wrong, no matter how hard she tried she couldn't rid herself of resentment, and her heart couldn't dredge up the smallest grain of comfort. How fervently she wished it was made of cardboard.

‘You're not eating,' observed her table companion, nudging her back to the present.

‘I'm not very hungry.'

His left eyebrow lifted. ‘Not very talkative, either.'

‘I know you mean it kindly,' she said. ‘But you can't help me.'

He wouldn't be deflected. ‘Sometimes it helps just to talk.'

His persistence didn't annoy her, or make her feel hot under the collar. She took a momentary pause to analyse her feelings; she knew she felt comfortable with him, but it was a shock to discover she felt partially ironed out just by being in his company. Yet he didn't look a soothing presence. Falling over that
thought
came another: a longing to unburden. Eventually she would have to unload to somebody, she couldn't keep it locked inside her for ever, so what better confidant than a stranger. Someone who wouldn't be around to remind her of her indiscretion.

She took another sip of wine, but even before the liquid had time to do more than pleasantly warm her throat, her tongue was tumbling out words, sounding inordinately pleased to do so.

CHAPTER TWO

A beginning, of sorts, found itself. To establish the bond between her father and self, she told him in a brief, few words of the mother with the soft voice and gentle hands, who occasionally stirred a tear in the memory bowl. It would have been nice (he thought she deliberately chose that placid little word, which conveyed only a shallow emotion) to have belonged to an ordinary family, with the usual quota of parents and perhaps a brother and sister thrown in. But such a wonderful, gay, charming, talented father (certainly an improvement on ‘nice') outweighed any disadvantages.

She used her fingers to tick off his assets with a childlike exuberance that had an
adverse
effect. She would have been horrified to know he was silently thumbing in her beloved parent's failings. Irresponsibility came fairly high on the list, as she word-painted a spindling child in unisex clothes. Scrubbed shorts, faded cotton tee shirt, looking more boy than girl, slightly more trouble than a kitten, less of an encumbrance than a parcel that is made to tramp the earth at the whim of a tube of vermilion.

At intervals he interrupted to ask questions of a personal nature. Instead of the snub he merited, she answered each impertinence in a frank, unabashed fashion. She was twenty-one. That surprised him as he had set her a year or so under. Eventually she must get a job. No, she had neither particular talent, nor training of any sort. She had acted as her father's unpaid housekeeper, chauffeur, general runabout—you name it, she was it—and there hadn't been time to think about training for a career. Anyway she couldn't envisage the day she'd need to fend for herself.

Now that her hair had dried out he saw it was a rich, russet brown colour. A strand had escaped on to her cheek and was almost in her mouth. He picked it off and tucked it behind her ear. For no valid reason, except that he enjoyed man's normal appreciation of such things, he thought about her legs. He would like to have seen her in those unisex shorts.

This intriguing notion was uppermost in his
mind
when she stopped talking, this time to stare, and not merely recharge her breath. The silence between them was unobtrusive, gentle, but her thoughts were busy. He tried to read them in her eyes, and in succeeding, choked.

‘Drop of wine went down the wrong way,' he said, making that his excuse as it seemed unkind to laugh at her. She was so splendidly serious.

‘I must ask,' she began.

‘Please do,' he encouraged, if with marked reluctance.

‘Although I find it dreadfully embarrassing.'—He found it dreadfully amusing—‘But,'—she leaned forward, imperilling her glass—‘I've just had the most appalling thought. These things do happen. A girl can't be too careful. So, what I mean is, are you picking me up?'

The same hand that had lifted the hair off her cheek, an intimate gesture that had probably set her thoughts on their present course, reached out to steady her glass. ‘No.' He matched her earnestness. ‘I am not picking you up.' It seemed wise to add: ‘I am showing a kindly interest.' His voice travelled on a razor edge as he thought she would prefer a cutting tone to one of ridicule.

Her eyes glinted. With joy? Disbelief? Her prosaic little nod told him nothing. ‘That's all right then. I had to ask, though. You do see that, don't you?'

He
wasn't altogether sure that he did, but he said: ‘Yes.'

‘That's all right then,' she repeated. ‘Because I'm drinking your wine I don't want you to think . . .' She left the finish of the sentence to his imagination.

‘Would you like a refill?' he enquired, adding a cautious, ‘No strings attached.'

‘You're laughing at me,' she reproved, a shoot of colour entering her cheeks. ‘You're thinking, How dare this unpretentious, unpretty little madam suggest . . . well, you know.' She didn't enlarge, she didn't need to. He put her obsession down to either teasing promiscuity or total inexperience. He noticed, not without amusement, she called herself unpretty and not ordinary or plain. He agreed unpretty had a much nicer ring to it. If he hadn't been treading delicate ground he would have said, I like your modesty. I find it refreshing, different. But you're not unpretty, as you so charmingly put it. Your looks don't ravish, by that I mean they don't snatch a man's breath away but, and this is the nonplussing bit, take it just the same by less fair, more subtle means. But that would have sounded as if she was on the right track, so he said nothing.

She tapped the table, with a poke of aggression she said: ‘Let me tell you, men think my type are easy game. They seem to think they are paying us a compliment!'

‘Horrible
creatures, men!' he quipped, trying to jolly the conversation into less dangerous channels.

Her eyelashes descended. He noticed they had golden tips, soft and feathery. When they lifted a thoughtful moment later, he saw that the eyes were forgiving. He thought it would be nice to know what miscalculation of thought or deed he was being forgiven. It was safer not to ask. Safer to say: ‘Do you find England strange after so many years abroad?'

‘Strange, disturbing, beautiful. Oh yes, despite the weather.' Her humour readily asserted itself. ‘Perhaps because of the weather! The air feels so soft, and everything is so green. But,' her smile was displaced as she was swept with melancholy. ‘There's always a but, isn't there? I didn't want to come like this. I didn't want it to be this way.' She looked down at her hands, clasped tightly together to almost endanger circulation.

‘You know, I can't help thinking if I'd been younger things would have been different.'

‘In what way could they have been different?'

‘I don't know, really. Yes I do. I reminded them too much of the gap in their ages. If I'd been about eight they might not have noticed me.' Her voice took on a wistful note. ‘I wish I could be eight again. I'd give everything I possess, including Darling Ugly, to be able to put the clock back.'

‘Who,
or what, is Darling Ugly?'

‘My troll doll. And good luck mascot. He's so ugly, nobody could love him.'

‘Except you.'

‘Except me.' Her glance travelled to the bulge in the pocket of her coat, gently steaming near the radiator. ‘He goes everywhere with me. My father gave him to me one birthday, oh ages ago, and I've treasured him ever since. I don't think he's brought me much luck. But I have the feeling that if I lost him, through carelessness, some dreadful disaster would befall me.'

Was he laughing at her? No, but he looked stern and displeased.

‘It's a bad thing to be ruled by superstition,' he said. ‘But I suppose your environment played some part of that.' For the first time he was in accord with her father. She hadn't come home a moment too soon.

‘Have you ever wanted to put the clock back?' She pushed an agitated hand through her hair, but in fact she wanted to poke a way through his impregnable manner of cool assurance. His reply was perfectly in keeping and the one she expected.

‘No, I can't say that I have.'

‘But at some time or other you must have come up against a tough situation. One you couldn't bear to face.'

‘Yes.' His mouth and his eyes and even the angle of his chin, rebuked.

‘But
putting the clock back wouldn't solve anything. It would only put off,'—he deliberately refrained from saying, the evil moment, and said instead, ‘The situation you thought you couldn't bear to face. Eventually you would have to shoulder up to it.'

‘Yes, yes I see. You're saying that some day I would have to let go of my father's hand. And better today than tomorrow.' This one should be up in a pulpit, yes even with those fiendish eyes, she thought. Her smile had been trembling near the surface for the past few seconds, now it trampled the barrier of good old honest indignation and the sudden, delightful lift of her mouth exploded the myth of plainness once and for all.

‘Thank you. You've been a regular,'—she hoped she didn't sound too sarcastic—‘what's the word?'

‘Samaritan?'

‘Yes, samaritan. Now, how many pesetas worth of food do you think I've eaten?'

‘None,' he said drily. ‘Haven't you any English money?'

‘Of course. I might be confused. But I'm not insolvent!' Blast the man. He was laughing at her again. And did he always have to put her in the wrong!

He reminded himself that she wasn't his responsibility, but right away asked:

‘What are your plans? I assume you have something mapped out?'

‘Oh
yes. Right now I intend to take myself off to the station to board a train to Weighbridge.'

He didn't usually double his mistakes and assuredly it was a mistake to ask: ‘What's at Weighbridge?'

‘A bridge, I should think.' Her eyes brightened suspiciously. ‘You know, if Dad hadn't met Angela, he'd probably be sitting here with us now. We'd planned to come to England on a motoring holiday. Well, just because there's only me, I don't see why I should ditch the original plan. My father was very generous.' She leaned forward, pathetically eager to show her parent in the best possible light. ‘He insisted on giving me all his savings, so that I could invest in a small car and see a bit of the country and still have enough to tide me over until I get a job.' With touching dignity she took out her wallet to pay her bill.

Dare he offer to pay it for her? Certainly he had been well entertained. But no, his generous impulse was certain to be misread. She would undoubtedly accuse him of trying to buy her for the night.

Which one, which one? Teasing promiscuity or total inexperience. It was as well that after today he would not have to see her again. He had complications enough.

‘Goodbye.' She juggled with the conglomeration of suitcase, tartan holdall and
cream
leather handbag, so that she could put out her hand. It was slim and brown, with unvarnished, almond shaped nails. He felt reluctant to take it. He frowned as a wave of annoyance swept over him. Yet he couldn't allow himself to get involved.

All the same. ‘I can see you to the station,' he said, ungraciously relieving her of holdall and suitcase.

Outside, the rain had stopped, leaving the air sweet and soft. His long strides gobbled up the deep purple satin sash of road, as if, she thought, doubling her step to keep pace with him, he was anxious to be rid of her. Well, at least he was in fashion, she thought irritably.

‘Goodbye,' she said for the second time, this time at the station entrance; but he brushed her hand aside, saying he might as well buy a platform ticket and see her on the train. Seeing the job through to its conclusion, she supposed with irrational bitterness.

The train was in. The third, and final, goodbye would be brief.

‘I don't know your name,' he said.

‘Nor I, yours.'

‘It's Ian . . . Ian Nicholson. Here's my card. If ever you find yourself in serious straits, you must contact me.'

‘I will,' she promised accepting the square of pasteboard. ‘Oh, and I'm Karen Shaw.'

‘Karen.' Quickly, quickly, because time was short, he rolled the name over his tongue. ‘It
suits
you.'

A whistle blew. It struck a piercing, imperious note. Doors slammed, people hastened, somewhere a child cried. Voices were of necessity raised to a clamour, which receded, to return with the gathered impetus of a sonic boom, spreading its audible strength to the far reaches of the darkening streets beyond.

‘Well Karen, this is it.'

‘Yes, this is it.' Her voice was stiff with urgency. This is it. The sand had run out. There was no more time left for him to infuriate her, amuse, chide and comfort her. Three cheers. Who wanted this smug, arrogant fiend-man with the devil-grin lurking to eat up his super serious mouth. Gosh, he was a bigger challenge than the world of loneliness and uncertainty that faced her. She could handle it; whatever came she must handle it with chin up at the ready. Strong, fearless she was. No problem, surely. Except . . . why did she feel so strange, so shattered? It wasn't like her at all.