over the world. Jeremy might never know how to plough a field or wean a foal, but then he probably wouldn’t want to.
She found her key and inserted it in the lock and the door opened silently into the tiny entrance hall of the flat. The hall was made tinier by her mother’s insistence on keeping an old chest, inlaid with ivory, which Lesley’s father had brought back from India, but it reduced the floor space to a minimum. Last holidays, Jeremy had hidden inside it and terrified them all by falling asleep and almost suffocating himself.
Lesley was closing the door again when the sound of voices coming from the living room attracted her attention. It was so unusual for her mother to have callers. She seldom associated with her neighbours, and Lesley usually knew when one or other of her friends from Hampstead days was expected to call. Besides, Lesley hesitated, it sounded like a man’s voice …
Her mouth went dry, and she deliberately closed the door so that they should not hear her. A cascade of staggering thoughts was tumbling through her head—the conversation with her mother that morning, the dusty station wagon outside, with the farming magazines spread over the seat, and now a man’s voice.
It was Carne. She was sure of it. She would know his low husky drawl anywhere. Hadn’t she always admired his voice, its throbbing timbre which had had the power to send shivers of excitement up her spine. But no longer, she reminded herself severely. She was no eager student any longer, she was a grown woman, mature and she hoped, sophisticated. So what was he doing here? Had her mother sent for him? Of course, she was home earlier than they could have expected. It was usually nearing six by the time she had negotiated the rush hour traffic.
She turned quickly, and as she did so she saw her reflection in the convex mirror hanging above the Indian chest. Wide, anxious eyes stared back at her, lips parted apprehensively. Impatience brought a frown to her forehead. Why did she look so anxious? Why should she be apprehensive? She had nothing to fear. So why did she suddenly feel like letting herself out of the flat again as quietly as she had come in?
Biting her lips to give them a little colour, she ran a smoothing hand over the heavy curtain of her hair, and turned to the door. She put out her hand, hesitated, and withdrew it again. Unwillingly, she could hear their voices now, and shamelessly she was listening.
‘Lesley simply doesn’t know,’ she heard her mother saying, a sigh of resignation in her voice. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to tell her.’
‘Then you must.’ Carne was always so unfailingly practical, thought Lesley maliciously. ‘She’s not a child. She would understand.’
‘I don’t believe she would.’ Mrs Matthews paused, and Lesley grew impatient for her to continue. What wouldn’t she understand? And how could her mother discuss it with Carne and not with her?
‘Do you want me to tell her?’
Carne was speaking again, and Lesley could stand it no longer. Whatever was going on, she was involved and therefore she had the right to know about it. With trembling fingers, her hand closed round the handle, and she propelled the door inward.
CARNE was standing on the rug in front of the marble fireplace. The fire was seldom lit, there being a perfectly adequate heating system supplied to the flats from a central generator, and besides, no one needed a fire in summer. In consequence, the grate was screened and Carne’s long, powerful legs were outlined against a ridiculously fragile tracery of Chinese fans embroidered on to a turquoise background. Lesley’s mother collected Eastern things, and the room was a conglomeration of Japanese jade and Indian ivory, and hand-painted Chinese silk. Their oriental delicacy made Carne’s presence more of an intrusion somehow, and his height and lean, but muscular, body seemed to fill the space with disruptive virility. Standing there in close-fitting jeans and a collarless body shirt, he was an affront to the ordered tenor of the room, and most particularly an affront to Lesley’s carefully controlled existence.
She barely glanced at him, yet in those few seconds she registered everything about him. He hadn’t changed, she thought bitterly. He was still as imperturbably arrogant as ever, caring little for people or places, showing a fine contempt for the things she had always held most dear. In spite of a degree in biochemistry, when his father died Carne had been quite prepared to give up a promising scientific career to take over the farm that had been in their family for generations, but Lesley, when she learned this, had been horrified. It had been one of the many arguments she had had with Carne’s mother, yet hardly a conclusive factor in her final decision to leave him. She knew deep inside her that there had been much more to it than that, an accumulation of so many things that clutching at his lack of ambition was like clutching at a straw in the wind. They had been incompatible, she decided, choosing the most hackneyed word to describe the breakdown of their relationship.
Now, looking at her mother, who had risen rather nervously from her chair, she exclaimed: ‘Exactly what must I be told, Mother? What is it that I wouldn’t understand?’
By ignoring Carne, she hoped she was making plain her resentment at finding him here, but it was he who spoke as her mother struggled to find words.
‘Listening at keyholes again, Lesley?’ he taunted, and she could not argue with that.
‘You’re home early, dear.’
Her mother had clearly chosen to avoid a direct answer, but Lesley refused to be put off by Carne’s attempt to disarm her.
‘Why is Carne here?’ she demanded, returning to the attack, and she sensed rather than saw the look Mrs Matthews exchanged with her husband. There was a pregnant pause, then he spoke again.
‘Your mother has angina,’ he told her flatly, despite her mother’s cry of protest. ‘A heart condition that’s not improved by the company of a boisterous small boy!’
Lesley’s legs felt suddenly weak, and she sought the back of her mother’s chair for support. ‘Angina?’ she echoed stupidly. Then: ‘But why wasn’t I told?’
‘I imagine because your mother hoped you would notice she wasn’t well,’ Carne remarked cuttingly. ‘It’s one thing to shout about independence, and quite another to expect someone else to help you to accomplish it!’
Lesley stared at him indignantly, hating him for his calm pragmatism. His returning stare had all the emotion of a hawk poised above its prey, and she guessed he felt no sympathy for her feelings of outrage and betrayal. How could her mother have confided in him? In the one man who in all Lesley’s life had been capable of making her feel mean and selfish, and spoiled out of all measure.
‘Why have you come here?’ she demanded again now, and this time her mother chose to answer.
‘I asked him to,’ she spoke fretfully. ‘Oh, Lesley, don’t be angry. I had to confide in someone.’
It was incredibly difficult for Lesley not to show how upset she really was. ‘Why not me?’ she exclaimed, with feeling. ‘Why not me?’
‘I believe your mother thought that if she could persuade you to let Jeremy spend his holidays at Raventhorpe, it wouldn’t be necessary to worry you,’ put in Carne dryly. ‘But I gather that hasn’t met with any success.’
Lesley refused to answer that. Instead, she concentrated her attention on her mother.
