Bird of Prey (17 page)

“I’m sure you’ll find everything you want here,” Randall remarked. “I’ve some present-buying to do myself, but I’ll come back for you in about an hour.”

After that, it was for Caroline as if she had been transported into a fairy-tale. It was wonderful to wander through the different departments, each decorated with silver Christmas trees from whose branches hung golden and crimson packages wrapped in gaily coloured ribbon. There was an expectancy in the air as people bustled about, their eyes bright with anticipation, as they eagerly made their purchases. It was exhilarating too to be in the position to order whatever she wanted, because Randall had given her carte-blanche to purchase just whatever she thought would be suitable for the children.

In a surprisingly short while she found she had amassed a pile of gifts and, on being told that a boy would bring them out to the car, she repaired to the stationery counter and invested in sheets of Christmas wrapping paper and a rainbow assortment of ribbon.

She glanced at her watch: Randall had said an hour, and she felt a sense of triumph as she realized she had done so much within the allotted time.

But when she returned to the car her glow of happiness was abruptly dispelled as she found Grace seated beside Randall.

After a curt greeting from Grace, nothing more was said while the boy piled the boxes and packages into the boot. But as Caroline slipped into the back of the car, Grace said pettishly to Randall, “I simply can’t understand why you chose to ask Caroline to do this job! I’m sure Mrs. Creed needs her— especially at this time of the year. After all, you could have guessed that I’d be delighted to help out in any way.”

It was clear from her manner that she was returning to a subject they had been discussing before Caroline came out of the shop.

While she was speaking her eyes had been raking Caroline. “My, you do look smart! All of a glow, in fact! But then shopping expeditions, especially with someone else’s money, have that effect on certain girls!”

“Now, just a minute, Grace, don’t you think we’ve earned a spot of lunch,” Randall broke in. “Let’s postpone all discussion until we have something to eat.”

He drove them to one of the big hotels and to Caroline’s relief Grace dropped the subject as they took their places at a table near a wide window where they could look down on the hurrying crowds.

But as soon as Randall had ordered, Grace said abruptly, “Tell me, why did you ask Caroline, Randall? Surely a married woman like myself would have a much better idea of what would be suitable for the children?”

Randall regarded Grace quizzically. “Really, Grace, do you see yourself as the maternal type?”

It struck Caroline that no one could have looked less domesticated than Grace did at that moment: she was dressed in a trouser suit of black and coffee-coloured suede, perfectly cut, and was wearing a great furry shako of snow-white fur which showed up the glossy blackness of her hair.

“No, Grace, I’m afraid it won’t wash. You’re simply not the

little homebody and there’s no use your pretending you are.”

“Perhaps not! ” Grace looked down for a moment, long black eyelashes fanning her cheeks, and Caroline was aware that, far from resenting this remark, Grace was accepting it as a compliment.

“No, I suppose I’m not the humdrum hands-in-the-dishwater-all-day type of person.”

As she heard this remark Caroline’s pleasure in the outing faded away. To her, being in Randall’s company was exciting and full of pleasure, but the reason for his choice of her was now only too plain. He had asked her to accompany him because, unlike Grace, she was a humdrum, hands-in-the-dishwater type of person, a girl who could be relied upon to choose suitable presents for young children because she was uncomplicated and obvious and, in Randall’s eyes, hardly more than a child herself.

“It’s a good thing I’m not the little brown domestic type of female,” Grace was saying, “because that’s the very last sort of person you’d be interested in, Randall, so don’t deny it.”

“Really?” Randall’s eyebrows had risen. “You flatter yourself you understand me so thoroughly, Grace, but do you really?”

“I may not understand you very thoroughly. I don’t suppose anyone really could,” Grace told him, “but at least I understand that much about you.”

Randall’s eyes were upon the crowds hurrying by in the street as he said slowly, “I suppose you’re right, to some extent; I admit I like a woman to be interesting and challenging. But just what makes a woman interesting in a man’s eyes? Each of us is alone in the things that attract him: what is fascinating to one is not magnetic to another.”

The food was delicious, but afterwards Caroline was hardly able to remember what she ate: the exquisite dishes tasted like ashes in her mouth.

“By the way, I suppose Robin will be welcome at the party this year?” Grace was asking, fixing Randall with a challenging look.

“Robin?” He appeared to be considering the suggestion. “You’ve never permitted him to come before, Grace. What’s made you change your mind this time—not the fact that this year Caroline will be in charge, by any chance?”

“But that’s exactly it,” Grace replied brightly. “Caroline is so wonderful with Robin. If the children become obstreperous, Robin might get excited, but with Caroline there everything will be all right. ”

“No one can manage Robin when he gets into one of those excitable moods of his, when he lets his imagination run riot,” Randall said repressively. “He’s spoiled and troublesome, and I can assure you that separating brawling children doesn’t appeal to me as a happy way of spending part of Christmas Day.”

“Don’t worry, Caroline can cope. Can’t you, darling?” Grace shot an antagonistic glance at Caroline. “After all, look how wonderfully efficient you are. Quite Randall’s indispensable right hand, aren’t you!”

“However, Robin’s welcome to come, provided he behaves,” Randall told her.

Grace chose to ignore the fact that the invitation was anything but affable. “Well, how that that’s settled,” she glanced at the dainty jewelled gold watch on her wrist, “I simply must fly. I’ve oceans of shopping to do! By the way, I suppose you’ve done your shopping, Randall?”

“Yes, I have,” he smiled slightly.

“And I hope you’ve got something simply stunning for me,” Grace continued lightly.

“If you’d dropped me a hint I should have been able to get something you’d be sure to like,” he told her.

“Oh, but I’d rather have it a surprise, darling,” she returned. “Presents are so revealing: one can tell if a man has really been studying one’s preferences.” Only Grace could have got away with such a speech, Caroline was thinking, as Grace waved and disappeared into the bustling crowd.

On the way back to Longmere Randall chatted desultorily, but Caroline was acutely aware that his mind was only half on what he was saying and in the long silences that punctuated their conversation she wondered if his thoughts were on Grace. If it were so it was only to be expected: Grace was so beautiful, so glamorous and magnetic: her conversation had a brittle challenge and interest: compared to Grace she was merely dull and stupid, unable to think of what to say.

She was actually relieved when the drive was over and they were moving along the avenue of Longmere.

As the car stopped Mrs. Creed’s figure appeared on the doorstep. “You’re just in time,” she told Caroline. “There’s a Dick Travers on the phone asking for you: as soon as I heard the car coming in I asked him to hold on.”

“You can take the call in my study,” Randall told Caroline, “meanwhile I’ll have Fred and Betty take in the parcels.”

She hurried across the hall and picked up the receiver which was on Randall’s desk.

“Carrie?” Dick’s voice came through to her. “I rang immediately to let you know that I’d like to take you up on your suggestion. I’d simply love to entertain the dear little kiddies on Christmas Day. Not, by the way, that I’d have hired me to such an outlandish spot on the map, but for the chance of meeting you again. Somehow, of all my admiring fans, you’re the one who has stuck in my mind.”

It was the sort of gay, chaffing thing that Dick would say, and Caroline’s heart instantly warmed to him again. After the fiasco of her outing with Randall, when owing to the meeting with Grace she hadn’t even had him to herself, it was wonderful to know that to someone she counted as a person.

This was made even more plain as he went on, “Can it be true, that you’re the same shy, retiring little Carrie of the holiday camp? Frankly, if anyone had told me that you would be the one to make good, I shouldn’t have believed it, but you seem to have done very nicely for yourself. By the way, how is Smudge? That was his name, wasn’t it?”

“How well you remembered,” Caroline laughed.

“Oh yes, you see I never forget a face—not even Smudge’s, and that wasn’t a face to inspire affection and confidence— except in your soft heart.”

Caroline felt her spirits rise under his gay banter. His youth and gaiety came across in his voice and suddenly she found herself looking forward to meeting him again.

“This will certainly be combining business with pleasure,” he went on. “Perhaps we could pick up again where we left off—or rather where we didn’t leave off—for you were a rather shy little person in those days—but fascinating.”

“Really, Dick, you are the most incredible flatterer,” Caroline laughed. “I’m sure you can hardly remember me, you meet so many people in the course of the year.”

“Ah, but none of them are like you, Carrie,” he assured her. Eventually they settled down to the business of his arrival. “But perhaps we’d better leave off until we meet again. What time would be most suitable for me to arrive, so that I can arrange about trains, etc.”

The next few minutes were spent discussing times and transport and it was arranged that Dick should travel by train and that he should take a taxi from the station.

As she put down the receiver Caroline was feeling slightly surprised at Dick’s attitude. His remark about their taking up again where they had left off—as if there had ever been anything between them! The enthusiasm had all been on her side: she had been his admiring fan, and for a moment she wondered if it were the change in her circumstances which had made the difference in his attitude, or was it possible that he had cared for her more than she had imagined? The thought seemed to make up to her for her disappointment of the morning, and it was with a glow of happiness that she went into the hall again, to find, to her surprise, that Randall was still there.

“Well, you got your call,” he remarked.

“Yes, it was from Dick, and he said he’ll be coming on Christmas Day.”

“Good! So that’s arranged. And you’re pleased?” as he spoke he regarded her intently.

“Oh yes, very pleased,” she replied with more enthusiasm than she really felt. But Dick’s bantering flattery had come just at a moment when she was badly in need of reassurance.

“I see! Then I’m pleased that you’re pleased,” he said shortly as he turned quickly away, and Caroline was left standing in the hall looking at his departing back.

It was then it struck her that she had been rather a long time on the phone. But surely that could not have upset him, she thought. Yet at the same time she was aware that for some reason or other he was annoyed with her.

All her depression returned as she slowly made her way upstairs to change before tackling the business of decorating the Christmas tree.

When she went into the green dining-room it was to find that in one of the corners of the room there had been set up in a blue-painted tub, a giant Christmas tree with spreading branches. On the great oak table were piled dusty boxes full of trimmings: as she took the lid off one of these she found, to her delight, that it contained old-fashioned baubles made, not of plastic, but of iridescent spun glass in wonderful shades of rich blue and red, yellow and green, purple and ivory; giant strawberries, gay balls to swing and turn, perky little Jenny Wren birds with stiff, upright tails.

But first of all, remembering that Randall had dryly described the children as “robust”, she took out of the room the ornaments and everything breakable. As she opened more of those dusty boxes on the table she found a perfect treasure-trove of brightly coloured paper garlands, giant paper bells and balls to be attached to the picture rails with drawing-pins with coloured enamelled heads.

By the time the room was arranged to her satisfaction, the early winter dusk was falling and she had to switch on the lights before she could set about the business of fixing the Christmas tree. She was opening a box containing strings of tiny lights when Fred came in carrying a two-sided household ladder. “This will have to do you,” he said grudgingly. “Someone has put away the big one and I can’t lay my hands on it at the moment. That’s the worst of it, turn your back for a minute and nothing’s put in its right place!”

As Caroline looked at the ladder it struck her that it was too short to enable her to reach to the higher branches of the tree, but she knew better than to insist on Fred’s searching for a longer one. “This ladder will do,” she told him, secretly making up her mind to fetch something more suitable when it came to trimming the top of the tree.

When he had gone grumbling on his way, she set to work, her personal worries fading from her mind as she became absorbed in making the tree as decorative as she could. Gradually she climbed higher and higher on the rather shaky ladder, finding that if she stretched carefully she could reach to the topmost branch. Finally all that remained to be done was to attach the fairly doll. She climbed the ladder with it in her hand and standing on tiptoe reached out to the top of the tree. For a moment the ladder wobbled perilously and Caroline drew in her breath with a gasp of dismay as Randall’s voice said sharply, “Do be careful, Caroline. Are you trying to break your neck?”