Whirlwind (14 page)

She gave him a sidelong glance of irony and he met it with a bland smile.

'You mean, you insisted on doing it?' she derided, and he laughed.

'I'm a great believer in economy of effort.'

'Very gnomic, but what does it mean?'

'It means that it killed two birds with one stone for me to-talk to you about Patti—I was able to put the case to you without embarrassing you, and if either Patti or her mother had suggested it you might have found it awkward to refuse!' He paused as he took a corner and Anna urged impatiently, 'And?'

Laird's eyes mocked her as he looked round at her. 'And it gave me a chance to get you up to my penthouse,' he teased in a deep, big-bad-wolf voice.

'Oh, shut up!' she said crossly, but couldn't help laughing. He drew up outside the theatre and she knew that she did not want to get out of the Rolls and walk away from him, she sat there for a moment, looking at him with a smile while Laird looked back at her, his grey eyes full of warmth.

'Thank you for the lift,' Anna said huskily, and he leaned towards her as if he was going to kiss her. At once she felt an upsurge of panic and turned away, fumbling with the door. She scrambled out on to the pavement and shut the door again; as soon as she had the Rolls shot away with a muted roar, and Anna walked into the theatre, biting her lip. Why had she felt like that? Laird had been angry at her silent rejection; she had caught one glimpse of his face and had been frightened by the rigidity of it.

Why am I feeling guilty? she asked herself, suddenly furious. Why should I feel I ought to apologise, just because I didn't want him to kiss me? Why should I let him kiss me if I don't want it?

She walked into the dressing-room, scowling, and in the mirror met Patti's eyes.

'Is something wrong?'

Anna pulled herself together, dismissing Laird from her head. 'No, sorry, I was thinking about something . . . '

She dropped into the chair next to Patti and propped her head on her hands, staring into the mirror. Every time she saw herself she felt the same twinge of unfamiliarity—somehow, somewhere, she had altered, she wasn't the same girl she had been a few months ago. Being in this play had changed her, of course; she knew she had discovered something about herself and about other people simply from working with Joey and Dame Flossie and the others. It was more than that, though; the alteration ran deep inside her.

'Have you talked to Laird?' Patti asked uncertainly, and Anna's eyes flicked sideways to meet the other girl's mirrored ones.

'Yes,' she nodded, smiling.

'Will you share the flat with me?' Eagerness showed in Patti's eyes, deepening their blue. 'It would be terrific fun, Anna. I've never lived away from home, except at school, and that doesn't really count, does it? You're still treated as a child and you don't have any freedom.' She had her chin cupped on her hand and was smiling excitedly. 'I can't believe my mother's going to let me!'

Anna watched her ruefully; how could she refuse when Patti was so lit up with happiness?'Let's discuss it before we make up our minds what to do,' she said warily, but she knew very well that she was going to move into that flat, in spite of the prickling of her pride. She would pay as much as she could towards the rent, she assured herself. She wouldn't let the Montgomery family take her over—she wasn't a charity case!

'There are one or two conditions on my side,' she said, and Patti nodded, listening intently.

'Oh, of course, I understand how you feel, and Laird didn't mean to hurt your feelings, none of us did,' Patti stammered when she had finished. 'You suggest the rent you want to pay and . . . didn't you talk about it? I thought Laird would fix all that, I didn't know what to say, I . . . '

Flushed and unhappy, she broke down, and Anna sighed. 'OK, I'll fix it with Laird.'

Patti was still worried. 'But you do want to share the flat, don't you?' she asked, and Anna laughed, shedding her own pride, trying to make Patti smile again.

'You've seen where
I'm living now! What do you think?'

Patti giggled, relaxing. 'No more Mrs Gawton!'

'No more spiders in the bath . . . '

'Ugh, are there really?'

'Every time you look!' Anna assured her. 'No more freezing water or draughts or sharing a bathroom with four other people.' She looked at her watch and groaned. 'Oh, no! Look at the time—I'm nowhere near ready yet. Don't talk to me any more, Patti, let me get my make-up on!'

Laird took them to see the flat a few days later. It was on the corner of the block, on the third floor, just high enough to give them a view of the Thames but removing them from the bustle and noise of the waterfront below. There were two small bedrooms, a rectangular sitting-room, a modern, fully fitted kitchen and a bathroom which Anna gazed at with delight, the tiles a lemony shade and the fittings a darker yellow. What made Anna's eyes glisten was the shower cubicle, with frosted glass door and gleaming chrome fittings.

'No more spiders!' Patti teased.

'Spiders?' enquired Laird, looking from one to the other.

'A private joke,' Anna told him.

'Come and stand on the balcony, Anna,' Patti urged, running across the corridor into the sitting- room. Anna followed her out on to the balcony and they leaned on the iron rail to stare out across the busy river and the skyline beyond. The morning was warm, the sky blue, the vista breathtaking.

'We'll be able to sunbathe out here!' Patti swung to measure the width of the balcony with two hands. 'We can easily get a couple of loungers into this space, and a little table, to put our iced drinks on!'

'I foresee orgies,' drawled Laird, and his half-sister giggled.

'We might even invite you to dinner!'

His brows rose. 'Who'll be doing the cooking? Not you, I hope?'

Patti made a face at him. 'I'll learn, by trial and error!'

'Not on me, you won't!' He turned back into the sitting-room, his footsteps echoing on the bare floor. 'Now, about furnishing the place—do you want to pick stuff from home? It will mostly be sold if you don't.'

Patti gave Anna an enquiring look. 'What do you think?'

'It seems sensible. Why buy new furniture when you can get it without buying it?'

'If we go back to Wolfstone Square for lunch, you can go round with your mother afterwards and pick out what you want,' Laird suggested.

'What do you think, Anna?' Patti asked again, looking at her for a lead. 'Will you come and help me pick out what we need? You'll have a better idea than me.'

'We won't want too much furniture,' said Anna, running an eye over the rooms and realising that they were none of them particularly large. 'I like lots of space and light.'

'Oh, me too,' Patti agreed eagerly.

They walked around the flat together, noting down the essentials such as beds and chairs and chest of drawers for each of them, and ten minutes later drove away from the flat talking cheerfully. Anna felt rather disorientated; she had fallen from the real, everyday world of Mrs Gawton and spiders in the bath and baked beans on toast for lunch into a dizzying new world where none of the rules she had learnt applied. Patti had no idea about money or necessity. She had always been given what she asked for and hadn't had to worry or plan or budget.

Anna found it disturbing—one minute she was at ease with Laird and Patti; the next she came up against the fact that they couldn't understand her, or the background she came from—any more than she could understand them. Wasn't it crazy to get even more involved with them? Anna's common sense was as strong as her pride; she could already see the problems ahead when she moved into the flat with Patti. It began and ended with money, of course, and extended to everything; because Patti's upbringing and awareness of that glittering security net her family money gave her, had formed her attitudes, from the clothes she wore to whether she took a taxi instead of a bus. It was the tiny, fundamental things that made or wrecked a friendship. Anna was very uneasy as she followed Laird and Patti into their family home.

Naomi Montgomery was openly delighted because Anna would be sharing the flat with Patti. 'I shall sleep easy at night knowing she's with someone I can trust,' she said. 'If she insists on doing this drama course, at least I'll be sure of that!'

'You make Anna sound like a nanny,' Patti muttered irritably, grimacing at her mother.

Hugh Montgomery chuckled. 'I never had a nanny that looked like that, worse luck! Don't I wish I had?'

Laird shook his head reprovingly at his father. 'Tut, tut! I'm ashamed of you, Dad. At your age, too!'

'What's my age got to do with anything? You're never too old to admire a beautiful woman.'

Laird glanced at Anna through his lashes, his mouth wicked. 'There's hope for me yet, then. Some days when I get up I feel very old indeed.

'You ought to get married again,' Hugh Montgomery told him with cheerful frankness, and Laird stopped smiling.

'Oh, no! Once bitten, twice shy. I'll never get married again.'

I
T WAS
, in fact, a month before they moved into the new flat, and during that time Anna saw a great deal of Laird. She had lunch with his family several times; Laird picked her up and took her home or to the theatre. Sometimes Patti came, too; sometimes she didn't.

It surprised and disturbed Anna that she and Laird found so much to talk about. Talk between them was too easy; she did not want to enjoy being with him that much. They shared too many interests: poetry, the theatre, books, art, music . . . they had no sooner started discussion on one subject than the talk flowed into another and then another. She was finding out what sort of man Laird was, and yet she sensed that for all their rapport and casual chat, there was a distance between them. Laird's charm and warmth hid a core of his personality she couldn't guess at, and, she felt, would never reach because he barred the way.

One Saturday evening he was in the audience, sitting in the front row, and once Anna had spotted him she found her performance unaccountably going to pieces. Her symptoms were those of acute shock: heart going wild, breathing too rapid, colour first red, then white. She stumbled over her lines and Dame Flossie gave her a worried look, delivering her own words with her customary perfection.Anna tried to pull herself together, only to dry. Mouth full of ashes, she stared at Dame Flossie imploringly and got a mouthed cue, Dame Flossie's head turned away from the audience so that they should not see her lips move.

Anna thankfully delivered her line and kept her eyes away from the front row where Laird's face glimmered in the darkness. After that she managed to stay in the part, evicting him from her consciousness.

In her dressing-room she looked at Joey and Dame Flossie with humble apology. 'Sorry, it won't happen again.'

'My dear, it happens to us all,' Dame Flossie said with her usual generosity, but Joey was not so sympathetic.

'What exactly did happen? It isn't like you—something on your mind? If you've got a problem and I can help . . . '

'No, there are no problems, thanks, Joey.'

His brow darkened. 'Then for God's sake keep your mind on the bloody play!'

When he had slammed out, Dame Flossie shook her head. 'Joey's temper is fraying at the edges! He's working too hard; he's just started rehearsing a new play at the National, trying to cut himself in half, doesn't work, doesn't work.'

She patted Anna's cheek as Anna stammered, 'Sorry I lost my place like that, I'm glad it didn't throw you.'

'Throw me?' An incredulous amusement showed in the old face. 'Never in this life, my dear.' She went back to her own dressing-room, and Patti and Anna grinned at each other.

'Laird's out front,' Patti said.

'I know.' Anna kept her eyes on her reflection as she ran a comb through her hair. She did not want Patti to guess why she had dried like that. Most of all, she did not want Laird to guess.

'He didn't tell me he was coming,' Patti murmured, putting on her coat.

Anna was taking a long time to change and remove her make-up. She said with careful offhandedness, 'Don't wait for me, off you go!'

'That's OK—we'll give you a lift home,' Patti said innocently, lingering. Anna could have screamed; she didn't dare admit that the last thing she wanted was to see Laird. She still hadn't recovered from the blinding shock of suddenly seeing him when she wasn't expecting to; that moment had cut the ground from under her feet and shown her how deeply she was in love.

When the two girls left the stage door Laird was there, leaning against his Rolls, his arms crossed and his lean body casually graceful. Anna had herself under command now, though.

'Where's the top hat and opera cloak?' she mocked, and his brows rose.

'What?'

'Wasn't that what stage door Johnnies wore?'

He eyed her drily, opening the passenger door of the Rolls. 'Get in, dear Lady Disdain.' Laughing, Anna obeyed.

Patti looked blankly at him. 'What?' She slid in beside Anna and Laird walked round to get behind the wheel. 'What did he call you?' Patti asked Anna, and as he got into the driver's seat Laird glanced round, his mouth crooked.

'It's a quotation from
Much Ado about Nothing,''
Anna told Patti, looking into Laird's smiling eyes.

'Oh, Shakespeare,' said Patti, shrugging the poet away. 'I've never wanted to act in Shakespeare. Have you, Anna?'

'I did some while I was in rep.'

'Don't tell me,' Laird teased. 'You were a fairy in
A Midsummer Night's Dream?'

'Actually, I played Iras in
Antony and Cleopatra,
and don't be so sarcastic.' She glanced out of the window, frowning. 'Where are you taking us?'

'To supper, I booked a table for three at a Greek restaurant. You'll love the food, they're authentic, and it's small, we won't find ourselves in a crowd.' He threw a glance over his shoulder at her. 'Sunday tomorrow, you don't have to work; so going to bed a little later than usual won't hurt.'

'I'm rather tired,' said Anna, afraid of spending too much time with him; that would only feed her addiction to him, make it harder for her to deal with the way she felt.