Coming Home (52 page)

It was done. She had made it. She was here. She moved sideways, and leaned her shoulders against the mouldings of the shutter. It was dreadfully cold, like being in a very tiny, cold room, because the glass of the windows was icy, and the thick curtains kept out all the warmth of the radiators. Outside, the sky was dark, swept with grey clouds, which parted from time to time to reveal the twinkle of starlight. She looked out into the darkness and saw the silhouettes of winter trees, restless, tossing their heads in the wind. She hadn't noticed the wind before, but now, shivering, she was very aware of it, piping at the edge of the windows, like something that wanted to be let in.

A sound. She raised her head to listen. Far off, a door opened. A raised voice. ‘We're
coming
! Ready or not!’ They were done with counting. Now, they were on her scent; on the hunt. She thought about going to the lavatory, and then, firmly, didn't think about it. She hoped they would all find her before she died of cold.

She waited. The wait seemed to last forever. More voices. Footsteps. A shriek of feminine laughter. Minutes passed. And then, very softly, a door opened and was closed again. The billiard-room door. She was terribly aware of the looming presence of another person, and was all at once terrified. But no sound. The thick carpet would muffle any sound, but she was suddenly quite certain that footsteps were creeping towards her. She held her breath, in case breathing betrayed her. Then a curtain was gently drawn back, and Edward whispered, ‘Judith?’

‘Oh,’ an involuntary sigh of relief that the waiting and the tension were over. ‘I'm here,’ she whispered back.

He vaulted lightly up onto the deep windowsill, and drew the curtain behind him. He stood, and was there, tall and solid and very close. And warm.

‘Do you know how I found you?’

‘You mustn't talk. They'll hear.’

‘Do you know?’

‘No.’

‘I smelt you.’

She stifled a nervous giggle. ‘How horrible.’

‘No. Lovely. Your scent.’

‘I'm freezing.’

‘It's bloody cold. Here.’ He drew her towards him, and began to rub her goosepimpled arms briskly, rather as though he were drying a dog. ‘My God, you
are
frozen. How's that? Is that better?’

‘Yes. Better.’

‘It's like being in a little house, isn't it? With a wall and a window and just enough space in between.’

‘Outside, there's a wind. I didn't know there was a wind tonight.’

‘There's always a wind at night. It's a present from the sea. Tonight it's a Christmas present.’ And with that, and no further ado, he put his arms around her, pulled her close, and kissed her. She had always imagined that being kissed for the first time, properly, by a man, would be terrifying and strange, and an experience that she would need to get used to, but Edward's kiss was hard and competent, and not strange in the very least, just wonderfully comforting, and obscurely what she had been dreaming of for months.

He stopped kissing her, but continued to hold her, pressed to his shirt-front, rubbing his cheek against her cheek, nuzzling her ear. ‘I've been wanting to do this all evening. Ever since you came through the door looking like…what was it Aunt Lavinia said…a beautiful kingfisher.’

He drew away, and looked down at her. ‘How could such a funny little cygnet grow into such a beautiful swan?’ He smiled, and there was enough light to see his smile. She felt his warm hand move from her shoulder, move down her back, caressing her waist and her hips through the thin folds of the blue silk dress. And then he kissed her again, but it was different this time, because his mouth was open, and his tongue was forcing her lips apart, and now his hand was cupping her breast, kneading the soft flesh…

And it all came back. Mercifully out of mind for so long, the horror returned, and she was in the cinema again, the dark, grubby little cinema, and Billy Fawcett's hand was on her knee, groping, violating her privacy, working its way…

Her panic reaction was totally instinctive. What had been pleasurable and delightful became all at once menacing, and it was no good telling herself that this was
Edward
because it didn't matter who it was; she simply knew that she couldn't deal with this sexual intrusion. She didn't want it, any more than she had wanted it or been able to deal with it when she was fourteen years old. She could not have stopped herself had she wanted to, but sharply brought up her arm and shoved hard against Edward's chest.

‘No!’

‘Judith?’ She heard the bewilderment in his voice; stared up into his face, and saw his puzzled frown. She said again, ‘No, Edward.’ She shook her head violently. ‘No.’

‘What's the panic? It's only me.’

‘I don't want. You mustn't…’

She pushed him away from her, and he let her go. She backed off, so that once more her shoulders were pressed against the bony strappings of the shutter. For a moment, neither of them spoke. The silence lay between them, accompanied only by the pipe of the wind. Gradually, Judith's stupid, reasonless panic died away, and she felt her racing heart settle down to its normal beat.
What have I done?
she asked herself, and was filled with shame because she had wanted to be so grown up, and instead had behaved like a gauche and flustered idiot. Billy Fawcett. She suddenly wanted to scream with rage at herself. Thought about trying to explain it all to Edward, and knew that she never could.

She said, at last, ‘I'm sorry.’ It sounded pathetically inadequate.

‘Don't you like being kissed?’ Clearly, Edward was totally confused. Judith found time to wonder if any girl had ever treated him thus. Edward Carey-Lewis, that privileged, gilded youth, who had probably never, in all his life, had any person say No to him.

‘It's all my fault,’ she told him bleakly.

‘I thought that was what you wanted.’

‘I did…I mean…Oh, I don't know.’

‘I can't bear you to sound so wretched…’ He took a step towards her, but in some desperation, she put up her hand and held him off. ‘What is it?’

‘Oh, it's nothing. It's
nothing
to do with you.’

‘But…’

He stopped. Turned his head to listen. Beyond the curtains the billiard-room door was opened and gently closed. Discovery was close at hand, and too late now to make amends. In some despair Judith gazed up at Edward's profile, and told herself that she had lost him forever. There was time to say no more. The curtain twitched aside.

‘I thought you might be here,’ whispered Loveday, and Edward stooped to give her a hand, and hoist her up onto the windowsill to join them.

That night the old dream returned. The nightmare that she had thought buried and forgotten forever. Her bedroom at Windyridge, and the open window, and the curtains blowing, and Billy Fawcett climbing up his ladder to get at her. And lying paralysed with terror, watching and waiting for his head to appear over the sill, his bright and knowing eyes, and his yellow-toothed smile. And, as he came, jerking awake in a sweat of fear, sitting bolt upright and with her mouth open in a silent scream.

It was as though he had won. He had spoilt everything for her, because in some ghastly, gruesome way she had confused him with Edward, and Edward's hands had become Billy Fawcett's hands, and all her basic inhibitions had leaped into life, and she was too young and too inexperienced to know how to deal with them.

She lay in her darkened bedroom at Nancherrow and wept into the pillow, because she loved Edward so much and she had ruined everything, and nothing was ever going to be the same again.

But she had reckoned without Edward. In the morning, still asleep, she was wakened by him. She heard his soft knock, and her door open. ‘Judith?’ It was dark, but the ceiling light was abruptly switched on, assaulting her eyes with its hard glare. Thus dragged out of sleep, she sat up, blinking and confused.

‘Judith.’

Edward. She stared at him stupidly. Saw him shaved, dressed, clear-eyed and ready for the new day, looking not at all as though he had climbed into bed at three o'clock in the morning.

‘What is it?’

‘Don't look so alarmed.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Nine.’ He went to the window to draw back her curtains, and her room was filled with the grey light of the late-December morning.

‘I've slept in.’

‘Doesn't matter. Everybody's sleeping in this morning.’

He returned to the door to turn off the light, and then came to settle himself, without ceremony, on the side of her bed. He said, ‘We have to talk.’

Memories of last night came flooding back. ‘Oh, Edward.’ She felt as though she were about to succumb once more to unstoppable tears.

‘Don't look so anguished. Here…’ He stooped and retrieved her dressing-gown from the rug by her bed. ‘Put this on, otherwise you'll die of cold.’ She did as she was told, shoving her arms into the sleeves, and bundling it around her. ‘How did you sleep?’

She remembered the horribly familiar dream. ‘All right,’ she fibbed.

‘I'm glad. Now look, I've thought everything through, and that's why I'm here. What happened last night—’

‘It was my fault.’

‘It wasn't anybody's fault. Perhaps I misjudged the situation, but I'm not going to apologise because, by my reckoning, I didn't do anything to apologise for. Except, perhaps to forget how young you still are. Dressed up and looking so glamorous, it seemed to me that you'd grown up in a minute. But of course, nobody can do that. They just look as though they have. You don't change inside.’

‘No.’ Judith looked down, watched her own fingers pleating the edge of the sheet. She said painfully, ‘I did want you to kiss me. I wanted to dance with you, and then I wanted you to kiss me. And then I spoilt it all.’

‘But you don't hate me?’

She looked up into his eyes, his straight blue gaze. ‘No,’ she told him. ‘I'm much too fond of you to hate you.’

‘In that case, we can wipe the slate clean.’

‘Is that why you came and woke me up?’

‘Not entirely. I just wanted to be certain that we understood each other. Because there mustn't be any tension or disagreement between us. Not because of you and me, but because of everybody else in the house. We're all going to be together for a few days yet, and nothing would be more uncomfortable than any sort of an atmosphere, non-speaks, loaded remarks or gloomy faces. Do you understand what I'm saying?’

‘Yes, Edward.’

‘My mother is as sharp as a needle when it comes to other people's relationships. I don't want her sending you long quizzical looks or asking me loaded questions. So you won't droop around, will you, doing an imitation of the Lady of Shalott?’

‘No, Edward.’

‘Good girl.’

Judith did not reply to this, because she couldn't think of anything to say, simply sat there churning with mixed emotions.

Relief was uppermost. Relief that Edward wasn't going to ignore and despise her for the rest of her life; that he still wanted to talk to her, to remain friends. And that he didn't think of her as a two-faced little cock-teaser. (She had gleaned this sophisticated phrase from Heather Warren, who had learned it from her brother Paddy. Paddy had a girlfriend whom he much fancied, but with whom, despite her dyed hair, short skirts, and enticing ways, he had got nowhere.
She's a bloody little cock-teaser,
he had finally told his sister, and gone off in a filthy temper, and at the first possible opportunity, Heather had relayed this fascinating information to Judith, making it perfectly clear that such behaviour counted, with men, for less than nothing.)

So, relief. But, as well, Judith found herself touched by Edward's good sense; prompted mainly by concern for his mother and her Christmas house party, but surely, too, he had been thinking a little bit of her.

She said, ‘You're completely right, of course.’

‘So,’ he smiled. ‘Family loyalties?’

‘They're not my family.’

‘Close as…’

Which filled her with love for him. She put up her arms and pulled him close and kissed his smooth cheek. He smelt fresh and lemony. The nightmare of Billy Fawcett had flown again, chased off by Edward and the clear light of morning, and love was back where it belonged. She lay back on the pillows. ‘Have you had breakfast yet?’