A BITTER LOVING

Lilian Peake

Karen went toward the painting of Glenn like someone sleepwalking. Then, in a spasm of violent, uncontrollable anger, she plunged the points of the scissors into the canvas and ripped it open.

When she saw the results of her action and her brain started to spell out just what she'd done, she was appalled.

"Well," Glenn asked, "have you got me out of your system?"

Out of her system? "Dear heaven," Karen thought, "I've got you so much into my system that you're part of the very blood running through my veins."

CHAPTER ONE

As she walked along the entrance drive, Karen thought, I must be crazy to return.

But there could be no turning back now. The interview was some weeks behind her and her appointment as a teacher had been confirmed and accepted in writing. Who but she, she reproached herself, would let her footsteps carry her unchecked, back into the building where, as a child, she had endured so much unhappiness and pain?

Now she was an adult, but even so she knew in her heart that those unhappy years could not be ripped out of her mind, like pages scribbled over in a scrap book.

The deputy head teacher, a mild, middle-aged woman, came into the office where Karen was waiting. As they shook hands, the deputy said, 'I'm Miss Worth. And you're Miss Durrant. I hope you'll be happy working with us.' She looked at the clock on the wall. 'The staff room will be empty. Everyone's at morning assembly, but please make yourself at home. Shall I show you the way?'

Karen smiled, shaking her head. 'I know it, thanks. I used to be a student here. I left ten years ago.'

'Well, well!' Miss Worth laughed. 'And you've had the courage to come back as a teacher? You must have loved the place!'

Karen thought, If I had answered, 'I hated the place so much the memories I have of it have tortured me through the years,' she wouldn't have believed me.

As her footsteps rang on the tiled corridor, it was as if the child she had been when last she had walked there was with her now, by her side, tugging at her hand and urging her to change her mind and run away. Run while there's still time! it said.

'Staff room'. The same words in the same black paint. Fear dampened her palm as she turned the handle and pushed open the door. I'm twenty-six, she told herself severely. I'm a member of staff now. I have the right to enter this room without knocking.

The room was not empty, after all. Unbelievably, he was there, his feet up on a table, a newspaper held high in front of him. He was there—the man she hated so much that the memories she held of him had turned rancid in her brain.

Like her, he was ten years older. Ten years' more experience of life had drawn deep lines on his face, but they had not touched his arrogant good looks or the sensual outline of his body, except perhaps to give it a greater maturity.

He looked up as Karen entered. His expression was blank as though he expected the old familiar faces to come straggling in. Instead, he saw Karen. Yet did he see her? she wondered. He inspected her with eyes that were only half aware, certainly no light of recognition brightened them. But could anything, she wondered, bring life to such hard, steel grey eyes? It was plain by his dismissing look that she kindled in him no interest. She could hardly blame him. Her hair was brown and shoulder-length, her face as pale and expressionless as his. She had hidden her shapeliness under shapeless, dowdy clothes. She never cared what she looked like these days.

He lowered his feet to the ground. The newspaper rustled and came to rest on the floor. He stood up, taking his time. His eyes roved, detachedly, mechanically all over her, assessing, summing up and glazing over. Karen had expected, even after a gap of ten years, to make some sort of impact. It seemed she had made none at all.

His hand came out automatically. It was a polite gesture, born of custom. It held no meaning, but all the same she shrank from it.

'I'm Glenn Earl,' he said. His hand remained extended, so Karen had to take it. 'You?' His smile was fixed, indifferent.

So he really didn't remember? Karen thought. And he had burned a hole in her personality like vitriol flung in a face, a hole so large it had not healed even through the ten years she had been away from the place—and from him.

I'm the new teacher of shorthand and typing,' she told him tonelessly. His mouth turned down in a gesture of amused disparagement, an action which invited her to smile with him, but she refused to establish communications. Let there be animosity from the start, she thought bitterly. The sooner he realised the depth of her hatred for him, the better.

As she stared unsmilingly, she realised she had been wrong about him. Time had played a greater havoc with him than she had at first believed. The years had hardened his eyes, embittered his mouth, tightened the skin over his high cheek bones. It had added flecks of grey to his dark brown hair. Unbelievingly she thought, Even now I can read his expression. Over the years her technique had not dimmed, any more than the damage he had done to her personality had healed. 'Sullen, supercilious,' he was thinking. Thinks a hell of a lot of herself.'

'Take a seat,' he said, motioning vaguely towards the chairs and tables. He bent to rescue his paper and put himself behind it. But, Karen noticed, his feet remained on the floor.

She did not accept his invitation. Instead, she wandered to the window, leant against the sill and stared out at the playing fields. How she had hated those playing fields, where she had tried to play netball and hockey, gasping and panting, her fat legs protesting as her brain had tried to spur them on. There had been too much other, too much weight, too much Karen Durrant altogether.

As she had fought for the breath she was always short of, the others had laughed at her, as cruel as only children can be. But he had laughed, too, in his mocking, jeering way, never letting a chance go by of drawing attention to her flabbiness. She recalled with pain how he had made her act as a model and stand in front of the class while they sketched her for practice in drawing something out of proportion, like the reflection of a body in a distorting mirror.

She had been twelve and badly overweight. He, in his early twenties, she guessed, had been the art teacher. She had been hopeless at art. But she had tried, listening to him when the others were inattentive, doing her best, handing in her work, only to have it held up and laughed at by the rest of the class.

Karen wandered round the room, looking at the washed-out watercolours on the walls, then returning to the window. He must have hated me, she thought. But why? I was only a child. At first she had tried to please him. Then, as it had become clear that he never would be pleased by. anything she did; as his ridicule came at her like a knife-thrower aiming round the target, but deliberately misjudging and hitting it with every knife he threw, she grew to hate him until it obsessed her and filled her every waking moment.

'Will the others be long?' Her voice came thin and high from the window.

Glenn Earl stirred impatiently. He did not bother to raise his eyes. 'A few more minutes.' ..

From the corridor there came a muted roar, the tramp of feet, hundreds of them. Now and then an authoritative voice would be raised above them, keeping order. The door opened and one by one the staff trailed in.

Karen, unable to help herself, cowered in the corner. The child in her asked, horrified, What am I doing here? I'll never feel their equal.

She recognised only one or two. Mr Radcliffe, teacher of mathematics, had been young and good-humoured when Karen had been a pupil at the school. Now he was ten years older and, as far as Karen could judge by the glimpse she allowed herself, he was still good-humoured. She could see that from the kindly way he smiled at her.

But it was the second man who entered who saw Karen first. He was short, rotund, and, it seemed, proud of it, and as he came towards her, he put out a welcoming hand. 'I remember you,' he said. His voice was heavy, too, like the rest of him. 'Karrie Durrant, isn't it?'

They had all called her Karrie in those days. Karen had sounded too dignified, she recalled with a thrust of pain, for someone of her laughable build.

'I'm Charles Vivian,' the plump man was saying. 'Do you remember me?'

Out of the corner of her eye, Karen saw Glenn Earl look up.

'Mr Vivian,' Karen put her hand into his. 'Of course I remember you.'

He was the only one she recalled with pleasure. He had taken them for French. She had been bad at French, too, but Mr Vivian had stood by her side, his patience, like his ample form, stolidly immovable, reaching out in his mind to help her on. He had been overweight even then. Perhaps, Karen thought, they had shared, deep down, a common hatred—of their own flesh. But it was plain to Karen that he had become reconciled to his and, she saw with a touch of amusement, he had even added to it.

'Glenn,' said Charles Vivian, 'you were here then. You must surely remember Karrie Durrant?'

Glenn Earl's eyes narrowed into cutting edges and gave her an incisive look. Ten years, Karen reflected, wincing involuntarily, had sharpened the blades. He drawled, 'Can't say I do.'

Astonished, Karen looked at him. Was he being honest? His expression was so unreadable it was impossible to judge exactly what he was thinking.

'Mr Earl,' Karen addressed Charles Vivian, 'would only remember the girls he liked. Mr Earl didn't like me.'

'Nonsense, my dear,' Charles Vivian replied. 'You must have got the wrong impression. We teachers never differentiate between pupils.'

Karen smiled, liking him for his naivety.

'So you've come back to work among us? What is your subject?'

'Office practice,' Karen told him.

'Then,' Mr Vivian said, 'you must meet your colleagues in the same department.' He introduced two women. 'Mary Harper, head of secretarial studies.' Karen shook hands with the woman. She was short, thin and not so young. Charles Vivian motioned Karen towards the other teacher. 'Mrs Crocksley.' She was slim, attractive and, Karen guessed, about her own age.

Mr Radcliffe waved from the door, following the others. 'See you at break,' he called. 'If you survive that long!'

'Go with Miss Harper,' Charles Vivian said. 'She'll show you the ropes. Done any teaching before?'

'Only my year's teaching practice,' Karen replied. 'I worked in offices until I felt the walls pressing down on me, so I decided to train to be a teacher. Here I am.'

'And long may you stay,' Charles Vivian said.

'God help her,' came from the teacher of art as he left the room.

The first week, Karen found it a struggle to survive. The girls in her classes varied in intelligence and in willingness to learn. There were ten streams of ability and well over a thousand pupils at the school. There were so many members of staff Karen lost count. The building still had a 'modern' feel about it, although it was nearly twenty years old. The bricks outside were a clear, clean red, the equipment up to date, the books as modern as the local authority finances would allow.

Karen found in herself reserves of authority she did not know she possessed. After the first suspicious response, the girls seemed to like her, and from this fact alone she drew comfort and a greater measure of confidence than she had ever had in her life before.

During the tea and coffee breaks, the staff divided into fairly well-marked groups. Karen found herself invited to join the teachers in her own department who were, in turn, joined by Mr Radcliffe and Charles Vivian.

Mr Vivian had told Karen to call him Charles, but somehow she could not do so. Deep down, she was unable to rid herself of the feeling that she was on the wrong side of -the staff-room door and that, any minute, she would be sent to the head teacher for intruding upon the teachers' privacy.

Glenn Earl seemed to hold himself apart. Now and then he mixed with the staff from the art department, of which, it appeared, he was the head. It seemed to Karen that, his staff apart, he treated all his other colleagues with contempt. Was it, she wondered, that the other teachers did not like him?

She gave a mental shrug. She refused to think about the man and would not allow herself to watch the situation closely enough to decide. In fact, she did her best to ignore him. Every time he came near she turned her back on him, or picked up a magazine and walked away. Karen wondered if the message was getting through to him that she was doing it deliberately.

One morning, however, she was late in arriving and, to her terror—so strong was the feeling of panic she experienced, it could not be described as anything else—she found herself alone with him again.

It seemed that he did not attend morning assembly. It was apparently against his convictions and the headmaster, a reasonable man, did not press the point. Karen cursed herself for having missed the bus. As she opened the staff room door, she remembered, just too late, that he would be there.

She started to withdraw, but he had seen her and she decided to brave it out. After a sharp 'good morning' from her, to which he merely nodded, she made for the farthest corner of the room and took out some work, pretending to be absorbed by it.

But, to her dismay, she found herself aware of his presence to such an extent that her ears were alert for his slightest movement. Glancing covertly in his direction, she saw him lower his feet to the ground. Her heart began to hammer. What would he do, go from the room? She hoped fervently that he would.

Instead, to her alarm, he strolled towards her. The electric fire was on—it was a chilly September morning—and he crouched down to warm his hands. Her traitorous eyes drifted from the words in front of her, finding their way to dwell on his bent body. His dark hair crept over his collar. His clothes, which he always wore carelessly, had a casual air but were of an expensive cut, almost, Karen thought, as if buying the best was easier and less time-wasting than troubling to window-shop for bargains, as she herself invariably did. . .

His profile was clear-cut, his straight nose and obstinately jutting chin standing out against the scarlet glow of the fire. His brows were thick, his lashes long and his lips, well-shaped and full, sensual and experienced. Why, she thought desperately, was she allowing her glance to linger? Why were her pulses racing at the mere sight, the mere nearness of him?

He had warmed his hands now, so why didn't he go away? Instead, he straightened, placed his back to the fire, put his hands in his pockets and asked, as if she had just spoken.

'What do you mean—I didn't like you?'

A voice inside her cried out, Ignore him. Don't get involved. But habitual politeness forced her to find an answer. She snapped, her tone acid in self-defence against the almost irresistible drawing-power which his physique and indolent manner held,

'I think the past should be allowed to rest in peace.'

'Do you?' His tone was hard. 'Your every action since you arrived at this school belies that statement. It's obvious you're holding something terrible against me.'

She answered defensively, her eyes barely able to hold his, 'Does it matter if I am?'

'Yes. I should like to know, if only in order to clear my conscience.'

Karen pushed the papers on her lap into her briefcase. She said, without looking at him, 'You? You haven't got a conscience.'

He lowered himself into a fireside chair, lounging back in it and crossing his legs. His eyes became two blades of a penknife. Even now, she thought despairingly, more than ten years later, she could read the message they held. I'll cut this female down to size. 'Tell me more,' he drawled.

'All right,' she blazed, incensed by his callous, careless attitude, 'since you've asked for it, I will. You humiliated me, you mocked me, you laughed at me, you tore me apart in front of the class. I was bad at art, but however hard I tried you laughed at my efforts.' To her dismay, tears threatened and her voice deepened. 'I was fat—you remember now?—I was gross and you hated my grossness. And I grew to hate you. I've never forgotten and I've never forgiven the humiliation you caused me.'

'Good God,' he sat forward, and the mockery was back as badly as it had ever been, 'and you hold that against me, something I'm supposed to have done ten plus years ago?' He stood, hands finding his pockets again, immensely sure of himself. 'Aren't you being rather infantile? I thought maturity brought with it a mellowing and a greater understanding?'

'Then obviously,' she hit back, 'by your measure, I haven't reached maturity, have I?' She met his eyes steadily. The threat of tears had been conquered, and the bitterness spilt over into them. 'Where you're concerned,' she said, and it was as though she were repeating a creed, 'I shall remain "infantile", I shall never mellow and I shall never forgive.'

He was unmoved except to smile. 'You're not fat now, are you?' He looked her over, his lips curving cynically, his eyes evaluating and slightly insulting. 'Quite the opposite. In fact, if you took the trouble, you'd be a tasty dish.'

Her colour rose and he watched it with obvious satisfaction.

'You haven't changed,' she muttered. 'You haven't changed one whit!'

He laughed and walked away, and she cursed herself for letting him know he still had the power to humiliate her.

*

Karen had returned to living in the house in which she had spent her childhood. Some years before, her mother had remarried, having been widowed soon after Karen was born. But the house in which they had lived had not been sold.

Instead it had been divided into two flats. One of them was occupied by a middle-aged couple, the other —on the ground floor—had become vacant just before Karen's appointment to the staff of her old school. It was at her mother's suggestion that she had taken over the empty flat.

So her mother was also her landlady, which meant that she. had complete security of tenure. Which, Karen reflected the day she had moved in, looking round and remembering the insecurity of her childhood, was ironic.

Whether or not it was good for her to have moved back into the old, damaging environment, she did not know. But she was there, and there she intended to stay.

That night, her conversation with Glenn Earl came back to her. Was she wrong to go on bearing him a grudge? Wrong or not, she could not tear the hatred she felt for him from her mind. She might have grown older, she might seem to others to possess poise, but underneath she knew she was still the reticent, uncertain young girl, afraid—of criticism, of other people laughing at her, of what circumstances might do to her because of what they had done to her in childhood. She had been the helpless victim o£ her own environment, of the constant shortage of money and of her mother's ignorance of even elementary dietary rules. She remembered her mother's incantations as clearly as if they had been recorded. Eat it all up. Waste food, waste money. Pastry will build you up. Eat the cake, dear. I bought it specially to please you.

Anxious to please her mother—and in any case, she was hungry—she had consumed the carbohydrates and starches placed before her because there, was simply nothing else. So plump had she grown, she found herself having to gasp for breath even when she climbed the stairs.

It was in her late teens, after she had left school, that she had rebelled at last against her mother's dietary dictatorship. She had simply starved herself, closing her ears to her mother's protests, to the coaxing and the subtle persuasion. She had grown so thin she had needed hospital treatment. She had almost starved herself to death.

But she had emerged from the Dark Ages of her childhood into a recognisable if anaemic, specimen of womanhood. She was whittled down, slim but shapely. But still she dressed as though she had some grossly unflattering figure defect to hide.

Whenever she could, she escaped into music, into reading, into long, lonely walks. And into writing poetry when the mood was on her. On holiday she went alone, walking across moors and hills and mountains, wearing clothes that would not attract attention, making herself immune to the dismissive pity in men's eyes.

Mrs Crocksley—everyone, she told Karen, called her Honor—helped her over her early teaching difficulties. Honor was slim and brown-haired and always cheerful. It seemed that she was the only member of staff who could evoke any positive response from Glenn Earl. They often talked, in the corridor or in the staff room, and sometimes Honor would take her coffee over to drink it with him.

Once he repaid the compliment and joined Honor. The chair next to Karen's was empty. Glenn smiled irritatingly as he took it, watching as Karen moved her chair further away from him.

'So,' he murmured mockingly, 'you still think I'm contagious? You don't want, to become contaminated? I should have thought that the passing of the years would have given you some immunity to my potential for ridicule and abuse.'

'What's all this?' Honor asked, looking from Glenn Earl to Karen.

Glenn gestured to Karen as if to say, 'Your move.' But she shook her head. She could not discuss openly something that had been her bitter secret for so many years.

Karen said to Honor, hoping to dismiss the subject, 'Mr Earl and I appear to be born enemies.'

But it seemed that Glenn Earl had other ideas. 'Miss Durrant,' he said, 'for some inexplicable reason, nurses a terrible grudge against me. It seems she's fed it through the years with venom and gall, until it's reached the size of a monster. Whenever she looks at me she sees, not Glenn Earl, but a creature with fangs and claws which she's convinced I'm going to sink into her.'

'Glenn!' said Honor, recoiling. 'You're making it up, of course. You're only saying it to provoke. Karen, you should hear him go on about commercial subjects, our subjects.'

'What's wrong with secretarial studies?' Karen asked sharply.

'They're soulless, deadly and tedious,' Glenn replied crisply. 'They blunt thought, kill imagination and train girls to act as men's—nearly always men's— unthinking slaves.'

'But that's ridiculous,' Karen turned on him. 'I might as well say that art is useless and has no practical value in the modern world.'

'Go ahead, say it. You'd only be joining the ranks of thousands of ignorant, uncultured types who have been saying it for years.'

'Thanks,' Karen responded grimly. 'Your capacity for giving offence hasn't diminished with the passing of time.'

'Look,' said Honor, 'what is going on between you two?'

Glenn was silent, leaning forward and staring at his linked hands. Karen looked at her watch. 'If you'll excuse me...' she said to Honor, and turned her back on Glenn Earl.

'Hey, wait for me,' Honor said, following her out.

As they walked along the corridor, Honor said, 'I wish you'd tell me ‑'

'Do you know Mr Earl well?' Karen broke in, anxious to stop the question before it was asked.

'He often comes round to our place. Monty, my husband, owns an art gallery. Glenn is a freelance painter as well as head of the art department here, and Monty displays Glenn's paintings in the gallery. His stuff is unusual, but it sells quickly, and at high prices.' They stood outside a classroom door. 'I won't say Glenn hasn't got his awkward side—he's very moody at times—but we know his ways and we get on well with him.' Honor asked, just before Karen left her, 'It sounds as if you knew him before he came here?'

It was a question and it required an answer, however vague. 'It was years ago,' Karen said, and lifted her hand as she went in to take her class.

'Charles Vivian moved slowly, even ponderously, but he was quick to understand and to sense trouble. Whenever possible, he seemed to go out of his way to remedy it.

Karen noticed that it was Charles Vivian the boys and girls went to for help in finding belongings and even, sometimes, for personal advice. It seemed he was, among other things, a kind of ombudsman, investigating private grievances with those in authority.

Whenever he could, he seemed to make a point of sitting beside Karen. She wondered if she aroused his compassion. When Honor Crocksley was not there, Karen sat alone. She noticed often that Glenn Earl sat apart, too, either reading or just sitting. Karen assumed he was thinking as well as staring. Now and then he would look at her curiously, causing the colour to invade her cheeks, but he never spoke to her.

He did not seem to be a happy man, but, Karen told herself, the fact did not stir one atom of compassion inside her. She was sure that, whatever troubles he might have had, he had brought them on himself. There was a ruthlessness about him which caused his eyes to bear permanently a hard, totally unillusioned expression, as though nothing would ever surprise him —or hurt him—again. His emotions, if he had any, were, Karen was sure, like nuclear waste, encased in endless layers of concrete and lowered into the deepest oceans of his mind.

Charles Vivian often drank his tea or coffee with Karen. He would talk, sometimes continuously, as if he realised that, if he stopped, Karen would not fill the silence. He talked about someone's problems or he would ask her how she was getting on. Apart from Honor, he was the only teacher with whom she could feel at ease: The others seemed so garrulous and self-important—so teacher-like—they brought back all Karen's old self-effacement and uncertainty.

As she talked to Charles one afternoon, her eyes wandered round the room and she caught Glenn Earl looking at her with something like contempt. She met his eyes and the sneer in his made the colour flood into her cheeks. She felt Charles Vivian look at her and then at the source of her embarrassment, but he said nothing.

One afternoon, Charles met her outside the business studies department and asked if she had transport home. She told him, no, she came and went by bus. Then he asked her where she lived. She told him and he said, 'I have to go in that direction myself. Would you like a lift?'

It was mid-October and the falling leaves were scudding across the playing fields. It looked grey and chilly.

'Yes, please,' she answered, and with a movement of his arm, Charles invited her to walk beside him. Karen slowed her pace, realising, with a fellow-feeling she had retained from the gasping, ponderous days of her youth, that he could not walk fast without abusing his lungs.

As they crossed the car park, they saw Glenn Earl unlocking his car. He watched them walking together, and the contempt was tight about his mouth. Charles Vivian caught his eye and they nodded to one another. Glenn Earl pretended Karen did not exist and dipped inside his white sports model, slamming the door.

While Charles felt for his car keys, the sports car reversed with a wide sweep and roared and bumped on to the main road.

'He drives,' said Charles, with a smile, 'as though he's permanently in a bad temper.'

They passed through the town and Charles indicated a turning to the left, still a short distance ahead. 'I live down there.'

Karen realised he would be going out of his way if he took her home, so she told him, 'I'll get out and catch a bus the rest of the way.'

He shook his head and drove on, only to slow down a few moments later.

'Would you come in for a cup of tea? Come and see how a crusty old bachelor lives?'

Karen hesitated, plunged back into the past by his invitation, feeling it was almost impertinent of her to set foot inside the house of one of lie teachers.

'Or,' he said, 'have you got a date tonight and you don't want to keep your boy-friend waiting?'

Karen smiled. 'No boy-friend, so no date.'

'No boy-friend?' He turned left, taking the statement as indicating that she had accepted his invitation. 'I can't believe it! A pretty girl like you?'

Karen winced, looking, as she always did, for the underlying sarcasm. But Charles Vivian was never sarcastic. He was just getting on in years, she decided, seeing every female under thirty as 'pretty'.

He turned into the drive of a semi-detached house, not old, yet not new. It was, Karen estimated, probably built in the nineteen-thirties. She wondered if he rented the upstairs or the ground-floor flat, but it seemed the house was his, and only he occupied it.

Charles showed Karen round the house. There were three, bedrooms, each containing a bed. 'In case any of my nephews and nieces come to stay,' he explained. 'Sometimes on my travels I hear of someone wanting a bed for the night, or a week, or a month, so the extra rooms are useful.'

'I'll make a cup of tea,' Charles said.

'Let me.' Karen followed him into the kitchen.

'No, no. You're my guest. I don't often have guests, especially charming young ladies.' He turned and caught her frown. 'I'm not flattering you, yon know.

I'm stating the truth.' But Karen shook her head. 'You seem,' he went on, 'to be under some strange illusion about yourself, Karen.'

She thought it was time to deflect the course of the conversation. 'You're very good to others, Mr Vivian.'

'Please, my dear, make it Charles.' He plugged in the electric kettle. 'You're not a schoolgirl now, you know. You're one of my colleagues, my equal.'

He saw the pinkness in her cheeks and patted her arm. 'Thanks, though, for the compliment. Perhaps I'm kinder to others than I am to myself.' He touched his middle. 'I have a weakness, self-indulgence. I'm too fond of good food.' With a smile, 'I have nothing else to indulge myself in. Young women have never taken to me, so I've let food take their place. Not good for my health, but—' He shrugged again.

'Doesn't it worry you?' He followed her eyes, which were worriedly looking at where he had patted himself.

'Once it did, perhaps, but not now.' He smiled. 'I remember you as a chubby little girl.'

That's putting it very kindly.' She could not keep the bitterness from her voice.

He made the tea and put the teapot beside the cups on a tray. 'It used to worry you?' He led the way into the front room.

'In the end it literally nearly killed me.' She told him about the hospital treatment which had been needed to restore her to health after her 'slimming' activities.

He poured the tea and handed her a cup. She refused the sugar. He took three teaspoonful. 'So drastic? My word, you must have suffered.'

'It was nothing to what I suffered as an overweight child and an obese adolescent. Mental agony is far worse to bear when you're young than physical agony.'

He was silent for a while, sitting back in the armchair and stirring his tea. Then he asked, lifting his spoon and letting the brown liquid run back into the cup, 'You remember Glenn Earl from the old days?'

'Yes. I hated him.' He heard the acrimony in her voice and his eyes encouraged her to talk. And because Charles Vivian was the kind of man to whom it was possible to tell one's innermost secrets, Karen told him the history of her miserable relationship with Glenn Earl. 'I know it's wrong to bear grudges, but ‑'

'You should try to make allowances, you know. He was very young, thought he knew everything ‑'

Karen shook her head. 'The damage he did goes deeper than reason. It's something I can't argue away. I don't think I'll ever forgive him.'

He lifted his head and looked at her. 'I find it strange how such a compassionate person as yourself— oh, yes, you are, I can see it in your face—can be so unrelenting towards another human being.'

She lifted a shoulder awkwardly. 'I haven't got your innate goodness, Mr Vivian.' He looked at her reprovingly. 'I mean, Charles.'

'That's better.' He smiled and then was thoughtful. 'Glenn's had a chequered sort of life. I suppose he's— let me see, around thirty-five or six, now. His parents parted when he was a boy. He was left with his father.

Then he married ‑'

Karen's heart pulled back and bounded on. 'Mr Earl—married?'

'Why so surprised? Most men of his age are.'

'It's just that ‑' How could she explain away the near-horror she had felt on hearing of Glenn Earl's marriage? 'Well,' she finished weakly, 'he doesn't look married.'

Charles laughed. 'I don't think he is—now. He divorced his wife in what others say were slightly dubious circumstances. I forget the details. Although I did hear there's still some link' between them, and that she keeps going back to him. Apparently she's also an artist. He's certainly not a poor man. On the contrary, he's quite wealthy, although you wouldn't think so to look at him. He keeps his affluence well hidden under that casual manner of his. His paintings are much sought-after and fetch a high price. What he does with his money, I don't know.'

'Where—where does he live?' Why, she thought, am I asking so many questions about Glenn Earl? He doesn't really interest me in the least.

'In a large house somewhere in the town. He has a kind of attic studio there, I'm told. He lives for his work—his painting. His attitude seems to be that the whole world can go hang as long as he can paint and paint again.' Charles sighed. 'That's an artist for you, and there's no doubt about it, Glenn Earl's an artist to his fingertips.

'But I don't worry myself about my colleagues' lives unless they ask for my advice. He's never done so. He's not the kind of man to ask for help.' He stretched out his legs and settled his short frame more comfortably on the settee. 'He doesn't like me.'

'But Charles, how can anybody dislike you?'

He laughed again. 'That's the nicest question anyone has ever asked me!' He laid a hand on the upholstered arm. It was a plump hand, like the rest of him. 'Glenn Earl calls me too "good" to be true.'

'He must be jealous of your popularity.'

He made a face and shrugged. 'Perhaps. He's not terribly popular among the staff. He's not exactly an outcast, but people don't rush to his side and vie with each other to be his friend.'

'Honor Crocksley seems to like him.'

'Honor likes everybody. Pleasant woman, with an equally pleasant husband. Of course, Glenn and he have a common interest—art, and art is Glenn's life. You might call it his consuming passion. He has no time for anyone outside his sphere, or any subject that doesn't relate to it.'

'He doesn't like my subject,' Karen murmured, staring at the russet-coloured carpet.

'Shorthand and typing? No, he wouldn't. Too prosaic, too much "of this world", as far as he's concerned.'

'I think,' she said in a flat tone, 'he's dismissed me as dull, unimaginative and dead from the neck up.'

Charles gave a short, loud laugh. 'I may be fat and fifty, but I still have all my faculties and feelings, and any man who could look at you and dismiss you as that must be dead from the neck down!'

Karen moved uncomfortably. He was becoming too personal, which was something she invariably shied away from. She laughed with him, but with embarrassment, not humour. She looked at her watch. 'Would you mind if I ‑'

'But of course.' He hauled himself to his feet. He was no taller than she was, whereas with Glenn Earl, she had to lift her head to look at him.

Charles left her at her door after extracting a promise from her that she would visit him again.

'I make all my own clothes,' Honor Crocksley said. They were sitting in the staff room before afternoon classes, having lunched together at the local self-service restaurant. There were one or two other members of staff in the room.

Glenn Earl wandered about restlessly, picking up magazines, flicking through them and putting them down again.

'I'll make you something if you like,' Honor offered. 'Come round one evening and we'll look through my paper patterns to see if anything appeals. What could you do with most? A skirt? A dress? You need brightening up.' She rubbed her chin consideringly. 'I see you in red—something cheerful for the festive season. Something exciting and well-fitting to show off your figure.'

Immediately, Karen felt uncomfortable. Any mention of her 'figure' brought back harsh memories. And Glenn Earl was hovering. Karen hoped he had not heard. But by the up-and-down look he gave her, Karen guessed that he had. She felt as twisted inside as if he had wrung her out with his hands. With all her strength she willed him to go away. But it seemed as if her will was not strong enough to affect Glenn Earl in any way. He sat a few chairs distant and, to Karen's embarrassment, Honor appealed to him.

'Don't you think Karen needs brightening up, Glenn? You're an artist. Don't you see her in vivid colours, scarlet, turquoise, yellow?'

A smile flickered round his mouth as he flipped through the magazine he was holding. 'Speaking as an artist—and only as an artist—I'd rather see her in nothing.'

Honor laughed, 'That's a man all over!'

Glenn glanced at Karen and as she coloured, his smile broadened.

Charles Vivian came in and made for the chair beside Karen. 'I wanted to see you, my dear,' he said. He put his hand on her arm and instinctively she started to draw away. Only with immense self-control did she steel herself to tolerate his touch. 'I meant to ask you the other evening when you came to my house, but I forgot. Do you like music? You know, the classical variety?'

'It's one of my escape routes,' Karen answered. 'Why?' She noticed inconsequentially that Glenn Earl was flicking surprisingly fast through the pages of his magazine.

'I run a music club,' Charles told her, 'for some of the older students. They appreciate it if one or two of the staff come along and show an interest. Would you join us^-? We meet at fairly frequent intervals. The next one's on Monday.'

'I should like to, Charles,' Karen replied. 'What time?'

'Four-thirty, for about an hour. Make a note of it in your diary.'

'No need,' Karen said, smiling. 'My appointments are so few they stand out in my memory.'

'What, no boy-friend, Karen?' Honor asked.

'Astonishing, isn't it?' Charles commented. 'One good woman going to waste. What's the matter with all the young men these days?'

'We'll have to do something about it, won't we, Glenn?' Honor prodded him with her voice.

He was prodded—into action. He put down the magazine and went out.

CHAPTER TWO

In the evenings, Karen marked homework and made notes for the classes she would be taking the following day. At weekends, she cleaned the flat, washed her clothes and ironed them. It was her habit to prepare the minimum of food for herself.

On Saturdays she shopped, on Sundays, she walked. Living as she did in one of the suburbs of London, the places for walking in pleasant surroundings were few enough.

It was November and summer's roses had withered in the gardens of houses. The blooms had rusted and withdrawn into themselves. Although the sun shone, it had little power to warm. Karen turned into the only remaining patch of woodland. Once it had been wild and natural, but as houses and high-rise flats had crowded in on it, it had been tamed and neatened into little more than gravelled paths running between rough grass and bramble bushes, although the trees that remained stretched high, intermingling overhead.

In the distance, children shouted on the swings and climbing frames. From the main road came the muted roar of car engines, revving lorries and screeching brakes, their pollution offending the sense of smell, their noise disturbing the serenity.

Over the years, Karen had developed the ability to blot out any unacceptable sight or sound. It was a habit left over from childhood, when it had been vital to her peace of mind to be able to pretend there was no one, looking at her or laughing at her. So, as she walked that afternoon, she imagined, as she had many times before, that the wood was a great forest where she could lose herself and all her problems and retreat into a world peopled not by staring eyes and pitying smiles, but by trees, shrubs and bushes, neutral, impartial and uncondeming.

People passed, push-chairs edged her to one side, dogs and children raced and returned to base, but Karen had retreated into a world of her own. Into that world, from the opposite direction, came a tall figure, lithe, lean, hands in pockets, eyes roaming, seeing little, looking inward, like herself.

Jerked from her reverie by the shock of recognition and the ridiculous hammering of her heart, Karen willed him not to see her. But once again her will seemed to have lost its power.

He saw her, stared narrow-eyed and, as they grew level, nodded. Karen nodded back. Not a smile passed between them. They moved in opposite directions. Her heart was racing and it was with something curiously like anger. It frightened her that, instead of becoming reconciled to Glenn Earl's reappearance in her life, her resentment against him was growing. If he ever came near, she felt she would have difficulty in preventing herself from setting upon him like a wild animal and tearing him to pieces.

When he had passed, she turned to watch him. She could not explain, even to herself, her reason for doing so. Had she perhaps hoped that he, too, would turn, join her and walk with her? With an angry gesture, she resumed her walk, reproaching herself for having given him her attention—so plainly unwanted—even for so short a time.

The music club was well attended. There was a sprinkling of younger pupils among the older ones. Charles told Karen that he had drawn up a programme based on a discussion he had had with the group last time. When that evening's session was over, they would all make suggestions for the next meeting.

Later, Charles asked, 'I suppose you're going home? Come out with me for a meal, Karen.' Karen hesitated, wanting to refuse, but afraid of hurting his feelings.

He must have seen her hesitation. 'There are times,' he said, 'when even confirmed bachelors feel lonely and in need of a pretty young face to look at.'

The restaurant was some distance away, but he often patronised it, he said. Karen, to whom food was of secondary importance nowadays—she ate, she had told herself, time and again, only to stay alive—wondered that Charles could be bothered to drive so far merely to eat.

He picked up the menu with something of the enthusiasm of a reader opening the covers of what promised to be an absorbing book. As he studied the items, he told Karen that food played a major role in his life.

'I call myself a gourmet,' he said, patting himself, 'and I'm proud of it. Some, of course, like Glenn Earl, might be unkind and change the word to gourmand.'

Karen made herself smile, but as she watched him giving so much thought to the selection of the succulent delicacies with which he intended to indulge his person, she had to control a feeling of acute distaste. He was lost to her, to his surroundings, to the world. They were side by side in an alcove and she felt herself drawing away from him as though he had an illness and she was afraid of 'catching' his overweight state.

Then she reproached herself. She was in danger of becoming neurotic on the subject of food—her childhood experiences lay dormant, but constantly on the alert, like a sleeping guard dog, ready at the slightest reversion into old habits, to snap and snarl.

She looked at Charles. Such a good man should be allowed his 'weakness', she argued. He led a blameless life, didn't he, and she doubted if he had ever given pain or done harm to anyone. In this, surely, he was hurting only himself?

When he put the menu away from him at last, he blinked as though he found it necessary to readjust to reality after emerging from a dream world. He saw the disapproval Karen could not hide, although she struggled to do so.

Charles laughed. 'You're shocked. I told you, I'm not perfect. I have my faults.'

'I'm sorry,' she replied contritely. 'It was good of you to have brought me here.'

His hand covered hers and again she experienced the desire to draw away. But with an effort, she conquered it.

'My dear,' he said, 'never thank a man when it's you who are making the gift. To have you sitting next to me, to have a partner—an attractive partner--instead of looking as I usually do, with more than a little envy, at the couples around me, is thanks enough.'

It was late when he took Karen home. They had lingered over coffee and liqueurs. As she let herself into the house and turned to wave as Charles went on his way, she hated with a frightened kind of hate the fullness inside her, the unaccustomed feeling of repletion. And, like an ascetic ,who had indulged for once in libidinous pleasures, she was furious with herself for having allowed it to happen.

At coffee break next day. Honor invited Karen round for the evening.

'Monty will be out,' she said, 'so we can have a real woman-to-woman chat. I'll sort through my patterns and you can choose something and I'll make it for you. How's that for friendship?'

Charles was sitting with them. Glenn Earl was at a table nearby, talking to a member of staff in his department. Now and then his eyes flicked over to the group Honor had gathered round her, but his eyes did not appear to take in what he saw, nor his ears what he heard. He seemed to be completely absorbed in his discussion.

That evening, Honor spread her patterns all over the carpet. 'Now,' she said, kneeling beside Karen, 'tell me what you need most. A skirt? A dress? What about an outfit for Christmas?'

'What would I do with it?' Karen protested. 'Put it on over the holidays and stare at my own reflection? Because that's all I'd do with it.'

'Nonsense. You'll be invited out. Everyone is. Now,' she looked at Karen with her dressmaker's eyes, 'I see you in a long skirt and a sleeveless top, low-necked and clinging. We'll make Karen Durrant so alluring the men will fight each other to get near her!'

'That,' Karen said, laughing, 'will be the day. So far, they've fallen over each other running the other way!'

'Which shows,' said Honor, 'just how stupid young men can be.' She leaned forward and picked out a pattern. 'That is the one. Like it?'

'Fabulous. But really, Honor, I don't want ‑'

'It's not what you want. It's what you're going to get. Where's my tape measure?'

'No,' Karen protested, but there was no stopping Honor now. She hoped Honor would not find what she was looking for. Something inside her made her cringe at the idea of being measured. She knew it was a form of conditioned reflex, that nowadays she had nothing to fear from a tape measure. But all the same, it was almost a test of endurance to stand there, while Honor measured and wrote down, measured again...

'You know something?' Honor murmured. 'Our measurements are almost identical. Karen, would you do me a favour? I've got an evening dress almost finished. I've just got the hem to turn up. Would you be a love and put it on and stand on the table while I pin up the hem?'

The dress was black and inter-woven with gold thread. It was long and backless, with a neckline that began at the waist and broadened out to become shoulder straps, hiding little on its upward journey. Karen stood on newspaper on the dining-room table and looked down at herself, relieved that no one but Honor was there to see.

'You're not wearing this in public?' Karen asked, unbelievingly.

'Of course I am, dear. I tried it on for Monty, and my word, his reaction!'

They laughed together and Karen pleaded, 'Whatever you do, Honor, don't make me a plunge neckline. I couldn't ‑'

'Couldn't you? With your lovely long neck, not to mention unmentionables! Damn, I'm running out of pins. I'll have to go and get some more.' The door bell rang. 'Now stand still, there's a dear. You nearly had that pin in my finger. It'll only be Monty, forgotten his key. Or,' she went out of the room, 'it could be Glenn. He comes when he feels like it.' She called from the hall, 'Whatever you do, don't move from there.'

Karen almost stopped breathing, clasping her arms to stop herself from shivering. Glenn? It mustn't be Glenn!

It was Glenn. He filled the doorway, his steel grey eyes moving like the stroke of a paintbrush over her feet, her body and her face. Slowly; her arms, her shoulders and her face grew warm under his narrow appraisal, warm with an embarrassment, which was spiced with anger. Having finished with the rest of her, he found her eyes, and whatever he found there seemed to amuse him.

Honor interrupted the silent skirmish. 'Monty's out this evening, Glenn.'

'I know. I heard you in the staff room at coffee time.'

So, despite appearances to the contrary, Karen thought, he had listened to what they had been saying, which meant that he must have heard Honor's invitation to visit her that evening.

'You know what you've done, Glenn Earl,' Honor said. 'You've interrupted an exchange of girlish gossip.'

'Feline gossip,' said Glenn, sitting in a chair and crossing his legs. He folded his arms and looked Karen over again from head to foot.

'You couldn't find,' Honor said, 'two less catty women.'

Glenn laughed derisively.

'Anyway,' Honor went on, 'if you knew Monty was out, why did you come?'

'Now why did I come?' He rubbed his chin, appearing to give the question deep consideration. 'If you really must know,' his smile was slow and taunting, 'to annoy Miss Durrant. No other reason.' He gazed at her sardonically. 'I've only got to appear within her line of vision to annoy her. See how irritated she's getting, and all I'm doing is sitting here.'

'Well, stop looking at her like that,' Honor remarked, searching for more pins, 'as though you had designs on her.'

He gave a short laugh. 'Designs on Miss Durrant's what? It would be like using a candle to melt a snowdrift trying to get any warmth out of her. Especially me, whom she vows she'll hate unto death.'

'Turn sideways, Karen, there's a dear,' Honor coaxed.

Karen hesitated. If she obliged Honor by doing so, the action would bring her round towards Glenn Earl.

'Come on!' Honor urged impatiently.

So Karen turned and to her chagrin she saw that Glenn was contemplating her full-length profile. There was no doubt about his interest. It was not. personal, she knew by his expression. His look was detached and quite uncoloured by emotion. Strangely, it upset her all the more for being so. He made it unquestionably plain that she did not interest him as a woman, but merely as a shape—as any shape, geometrical or otherwise, would appeal to an artist.

'I wish,' Honor went on, measuring the hem of the skirt, 'someone would tell me why you two have this "hate" thing. To my knowledge you've scarcely exchanged two words since you met.'

'Ah, now,' said Glenn blandly, 'you're wrong there, Honor. We first met, let me see, a good thirteen years ago, wasn't it, Miss Durrant?'

'No, really?' asked Honor.

'Yes, really,' said Glenn. 'I was an art teacher here, newly-qualified, in my first job. Miss Durrant was ‑'

'Don't!' Karen cried.

He settled more comfortably in his chair and went on as though she had not spoken. 'Miss Durrant was a schoolgirl——'

'Stop it!' Karen swung away from him, her mouth tight, her hands clenched, jerking the hem from Honor's fingers and sweeping the few remaining pins on to the carpet.

'Blast,' said Honor calmly. 'I'll have to pick them up later. I'll get some more from the bedroom.' She went upstairs.

'Now look what you've done,' Glenn taunted, watching the anger stiffen Karen's limbs. Then his eyes narrowed and assessed again as if, artist that he was, he was uncovering her layer by layer to reach the essentials beneath the clothes, the truth beneath the skin.

Karen said, 'if you tell Honor one more thing about the past, I'll—I'll ‑' She took refuge in childish phraseology, realising as soon as she had said it how weak it sounded, 'I'll never speak to you again!'

He got up and wandered round the room, turning his back on her. 'That,' he commented, 'would be a terrible punishment, a fate too intolerable to contemplate.'

The sarcasm still had the power to wound. Even now, all those years later, Karen found that she still had no defences against it, no means of retaliating in the same terms. She could only use her hatred like a knife, until it drew blood from him, too.

He bent down and withdrew a book from a shelf. 'You're still a fat girl inside, aren't you?' He turned the pages, standing with his back to her. 'You've got a "fat" mind. You may have a figure like a Venus, but mentally you're stodgy, fleshy, dull, heavy-going ‑'

He turned slowly to witness the effect of his words.

Her lip quivered, she couldn't help it. Her eyes filled, her cheeks drained. The surplus weight, the precociously mature shape bulging from too-tight clothes —they were all there again. She was back in front of the class, exposed and humiliated.

'Which,' he went on, 'is probably why you go so well with your middle-aged admirer.'

'Who's got a middle-aged admirer?' Honor asked, coming back.

'The dressmaker's dummy standing on the table,' said Glenn.

'Karen? Tell.'

'I'm referring,' said Glenn, watching as Karen fought to keep control, 'to that doer of good works, Charles Vivian. Every time he looks at her, he makes a meal of her. He feasts his eyes. He's obese as they come, yet every day, conscientiously he adds to his weight, as though it were some sort of cult with him. Perhaps that's why she's drawn to him. Every time she looks at his bulging outline, she thinks, "There but for fortune...'"

'Karen,' Honor glanced up at her then down again at the work she was doing, missing the heightened colour and angry eyes, 'you're not, surely, interested in Mr Vivian? He's a nice man, but dear, he's years older than you and a confirmed bachelor. He's so set in his ways nothing can change them now.'

'Don't worry, Honor,' Glenn said, crouching down and pushing the book back into place, 'Charles Vivian wouldn't know what to do even if a woman threw herself at him, gratis.'

'And that,' Karen cried, goaded beyond endurance, 'is where you're wrong. He's human and warm and sympathetic and kind. Everything, in fact, that you're not. How you can stand in judgment upon such a good man, you with your sarcasm, your nastiness, your ridicule...'

'Thanks,' he said mildly, 'for the compliments. The day you speak well of me ‑'

'Will be the day I die.'

'Stop it, you two, for heaven's sake,' Honor urged. 'If Karen likes Charles Vivian, that's her business. If it ripens into something deeper than liking ‑'

'Then she wouldn't be marrying a man, she'd be marrying a father substitute.'

'You could be right,' Karen said quietly, trembling now. 'I never knew my father—that is, if I ever had one, a legal one. My mother assures me I had.'

There was a short, brittle silence. Honor broke it by sighing and saying, 'There, that's the last pin. Thanks, Karen. I appreciate your co-operation. Get down and I'll help you off with the dress. I'll go and put the kettle on.' She called over her shoulder. 'Glenn, give Karen a chair to stand on, there's a dear.'

He went towards her as she stood stiffly waiting. Before she knew what he was about, he had reached up, clamped his hands to her waist and swung her down, holding her in front of him and looking into her face. 'Shall we call a truce?'

So it was a game to him? Karen twisted away, brushing herself as though she had been defiled. 'No, never!'

Honor came back from the kitchen, looked from one to the other and said brightly, 'Kettle's on. Ah, good, you're down, Karen. We'll have to be careful taking this dress off.' She bent down to lift the skirt from the hem, but Karen pushed her hands away.

'Not while he's here.' She nodded towards Glenn Earl.

'Glenn? Don't mind him. He's used to seeing girls undressed. He's an artist, dear. He even paints 'em like that.'

'Not while he's here,' Karen insisted.

Honor sighed. 'Glenn, co-operate, there's a dear. Turn round, don't look.'

Glenn gave an exaggerated sigh, turned his back and contemplated an etching on the wall.

'Thanks a lot,' said Honor, as Karen wriggled as rapidly as she could from the enfolding material. Honor folded the dress. 'Now, while I make the tea, pop upstairs and get dressed.'

Karen, glancing at Glenn's back, thought, I'm sure he'll turn round. He did. She scampered into the hall wearing less than would have been covered by a two-piece swimsuit. As she ran up the stairs, she looked down into the hall and saw that Glenn had left the dining-room and was watching her with eyes that were amused, appreciative and unsparing.

When Karen returned to the dining-room, wearing pants and long-sleeved blouse, Glenn was staring into the hissing flames of the gas fire. He did not seem to notice he was no longer alone, so Karen strolled across the room to look at the same etching on the wall.

Honor pushed in a trolley and as they drank the tea and crunched biscuits, she said, 'We'll go shopping at the weekend, Karen, and choose your material. I'll easily have the outfit finished by Christmas.'

'No hurry, Honor,' Karen replied. 'I won't be going anywhere over Christmas.'

'What'll you do? Stay at home?'

Karen put her cup carefully on to the saucer. 'Yes. My Christmas will be spent alone, probably reading and watching television.'

Honor said she was horrified to hear it. 'You don't go to your family?'

'I haven't got a "family". My mother remarried some years ago. They won't want me.' She refused another cup of tea. 'Don't worry about me, Honor. I'm used to my own company. I've put up with it for a good many years now.'

'We can't have that,' Honor said firmly. 'Not over Christmas. You must come here. We're having both sets of parents. One more won't notice.'

'It's very kind of you, Honor,' Karen said, 'but I couldn't butt in on a family gathering. I'll be perfectly all right, honestly.'

'Well, you must come to our New Year's Eve party. I insist. What will you do over Christmas, Glenn?'

He shrugged. 'Go to friends, probably.' He stood up and looked at Karen. 'Want a lift?'

'No, thanks,' she answered coldly. 'I'd rather walk.'

His shoulders moved indifferently. 'Please yourself. Goodnight.'

Honor saw him out. When she came back, Karen said; 'Mr Vivian told me Glenn Earl's been divorced.'

'Yes, he has. He wasn't married for very long. It was an odd sort of match. She shared the studio in his house. Still does, I believe, so he hasn't broken with her entirely.'

'What happened?'

'The inevitable. They were both artists, with the same kind of temperament. Rumour had it that she was his mistress. It seems she became pregnant so he married her. Rumour also has it that she had a miscarriage, consequently losing the baby, so he divorced her.'

Karen was shocked and said so.

Honor sighed, as if the subject was beyond her comprehension. 'Those are the bare facts. It sounds bad, I know, and puts him in a bad light, but I don't think he's as black as people paint him.'

'Isn't he?'

Honor looked up from her sewing, hearing the condemnation. 'I know you don't like him, and I don't know why, but Monty and I get on well with him. I know he talks about his "friends", but I don't think he has many.'

'That doesn't surprise me,' Karen commented acidly.

Honor laughed. 'You're determined to go on hating him, aren't you? Let's change the subject.'

For the rest of the evening, they talked dressmaking.

Karen invited Charles to her flat. She felt it was necessary to repay him for the meal he had given her. She lit the fire and set the table with place mats, but knew the food she would be offering was hardly of gourmet standard.

When Charles arrived, Karen apologised for the simplicity of the meal, but he gallantly praised her cooking.

'I'm not of the Cordon Bleu standard myself,' he laughed.

He praised her taste in music, too, commenting on how similar it was to his own. They played records and as the evening passed, Karen found she was even able to tolerate the touch of his hand, a gesture he made now and then to draw her attention to something.

When he left he held her hand, patting the back of it. 'It's been a delight, this evening I've spent with you, Karen. You must come to me soon.'

As his car drove into the night, she tried to visualise—and it was as if the future were a play and she was a member of the audience—where their friendship would lead.

After the next meeting of the school music club, Charles apologised for not being able to give Karen a lift home. 'One of the boys wants to see me,' he explained. 'He's got family trouble. I might have to go with him to sort things out.'

It was raining as Karen walked down the school drive. She had no covering for her hair but turned up the collar of her coat. It was mid-November and misty. The thought of returning to a cold, empty flat seemed somehow depressing. A car swished over the wet asphalt drive and Karen moved to one side to allow it to pass. It stopped beside her.

'Miss Durrant?' She recognised the voice at once and walked on.

The car caught her up, passed her and stopped again. The passenger door was thrown open, acting as a barrier. 'Get in and stop acting like a child.'

If she had tried to walk round the open door, she would have had to trample over the flower bed. This the occupant of the car must have foreseen. Sulkily Karen edged into the passenger seat.

Glenn Earl looked her over. 'You're wet.'

'I don't mind being wet. I wanted to walk.'

He stopped the car just before turning into the main road. 'You want to get out?' Karen gazed at him in the light of a street lamp. His fine-featured face was blank, his eyes equally so. She shook her head.

'Then for God's sake stop complaining.'

The statement silenced her. She stared through the rain-spattered windscreen and heard him ask, 'Where do you live?'

Karen told him and he followed her directions, pulling up in front of the house. Her hand was opening the car door when he said, 'Are you going to invite me in?'

The question flustered her. 'Well, I ‑' How could she refuse? And if he came in, what would she do with him? They had no point of contact, she told herself desperately, no lines of communication. 'I don't ‑'

He was out of the car and locking it before she could invent an excuse for sending him away. She led the way to the front door, splashing in the wet puddles. Her heart was somewhere down there in those pools of water. As a hostess she felt entirely inadequate; she had had so little practice in the art. Small talk did not come easily to her.

Anyway, how could she converse with someone as mentally untouchable as Glenn Earl? Now he was a guest in her own home, how could she control the anger his nearness constantly inspired in her, and which spilt over from the past like molten lava, consuming everything, all sympathy, all forgiveness, in its path?

In the hall, she turned. 'Would you like some tea? Or coffee?'

'Thanks.' He removed his damp suede coat and placed it on a coat hanger among the other outdoor clothes which hung in the hall. 'Coffee. Black and strong.'

She indicated the living-room. 'Would you please go in there?' But instead, he followed her into the kitchen. Her heart sank. The last thing she wanted was to have Glenn Earl watching her every action, silently criticising, even secretly laughing.

The kitchen was small and he got in the way. She didn't like to tell him so, although it meant that whenever she wanted something from a cupboard or a drawer, she had either to stretch across him which she hated, because being so near him made her bristle, or ask him to move, which he did with obvious reluctance.

He looked around. 'This isn't bad. Is the rent high?'

'No. My mother's the landlady.' He raised his eyebrows questioningly, as though the statement puzzled him. 'This was my home as a child,' Karen explained. 'When my mother remarried, she let the place as two flats. One became empty and here I am.'

He watched her silently for a moment, then he commented, 'I suppose the place holds memories?'

'Too many. They haunt me.'

Then why come back?'

She shook her head. 'I don't know. Convenience, I suppose.'

To her relief, he left her, wandering along the hall. She looked through the kitchen door, wondering what had caught his attention. He was looking through the doorway into her bedroom. He could not have missed the starkness of it. As she carried the tray into the living-room, he followed.

'You seem to live the life of a nun,' he commented.

She stiffened, seeing the statement as a criticism. 'I live how I choose,' she answered sharply.

'Do you?' His tone was sceptical. 'You have no hidden longings, no secret dreams?' Karen did not respond to his sardonic probing. 'But then you wouldn't, would you?' His voice was baiting now and she cowered inside, young and vulnerable again, with no shield from his mockery. 'No imagination,' he went on goadingly, 'that was always your trouble.'

Karen looked at him, burning with resentment, and saw the derision.

He sat down and accepted the coffee she offered him, but refused the sugar. He leaned back in the armchair, completely at ease, as if he had been a life-long visitor to the house. She hated his self-confidence, hated him for possessing what she had never had.

And he had so much. You had only to look at him, at the length and strength of him. There was a tension inside him like a coiled spring, a tension which was totally under his control, something he could release or recall at will. His very presence made her nervous, self-conscious and utterly deprived of the confidence she had so painstakingly hoarded through the years, like an impoverished hermit his pitiful store of food.

His silence made her as clumsy as the schoolgirl she had once been. It was not so much a physical clumsiness—like spilling her tea on the carpet—as a mental one, drying up her ability even to think. What, she wondered despairingly, was this terrifying power he had over her, a power he had possessed, without even knowing it, since she had first set eyes on him?

She sat back in her chair as he was doing, pretending to be as at ease as he was, but so tongue-tied it hurt. Since he seemed satisfied with the silence between them, she thought, Let it stay that way.

'Who lives upstairs?' The silence was shattered so suddenly it was as if a bomb had exploded in her brain.

It took her a few moments to pull herself together and, seeing his interested, appraising eyes upon her, became even more flustered. 'A—a middle-aged couple. Their children are grown-up and have families of their own.'

Through another long and painful silence, she could not bring herself to look at him, although she was certain he was watching her. 'What do you teach besides shorthand and typing?'

He seemed to be scraping the barrel of conversational topics. Well, Karen thought fiercely, I'm not going to help him. He had invited himself into her home.

She stirred her coffee until it swirled. Then she said, parting with the information as reluctantly as an adolescent a toy beloved in childhood, 'Filing systems, how to handle mail according to the size of the business organisation, how to answer the telephone, the use of the duplicating machine and the photo-copier.'

He put a hand to his head as though the idea repelled him.

'It goes with my mind,' she said bitterly. 'Fat, you said, fleshy, stodgy, like an undercooked suet pudding.' She wondered at her own vehemence in defending her subject in the face of his criticism. Shouldn't she be used to it by now?

He rested his head on the chair back and eyed her through narrowed lids. 'How you do take things to heart.'

'What else am I to do?' she flared. 'Regard all your attacks on my character as a great big joke?'

'My dear girl,' he drawled, 'never let it be said that I attacked your character. That, I'm sure, is as pure and unsullied as mother's milk.'

'Can't you ever be sincere?' she cried. 'Can't you ever drop the sarcasm?' He went on looking at her but saying nothing. 'I remember it as a child.' Words came spilling out now, beyond her control. 'It hurt, it hurt so much it was like a pick-axe hitting me, digging into me, making great holes in my personality, making me bleed inside.'

She stood, clattering the cups on the tray. 'Puppy fat, they used to tell me, but they should have called it "poverty" fat. We were poor, so my mother bought the cheapest food, precious little protein, it was too expensive. I became like a soft toy, stuffed with carbohydrates. And everybody laughed at me, you more than anyone.'

He leaned forward. 'I'm not trying to excuse myself, but shall I tell you something? I was just out of college, arrogant as all, the newly-qualified. I suppose at the time I needed something to sharpen my manly wits on.'

'So you picked on me,' she said bitterly, 'defenceless, vulnerable and unable to hit back.'

'Look, Karen,' he clasped his hands loosely. 'I'm sorry. What more can I say? Does that do anything to alleviate the pain you allege I caused?'

'Allege.' There it was again, the doubt, the disbelief. 'Not a thing,' she snapped.

'Oh, for God's sake!' He drew himself out of the chair and wandered round the room, stopping at a small table which Karen used as a desk. On it stood a typewriter which held a sheet of paper. He bent down to look more closely.

'Don't read that!' she cried. 'It's private. Anyway, you'll only laugh at it.'

But he ignored her protests. Karen held her breath, knowing what he was reading, knowing the words by heart. She thought them over in her mind as she watched his eyes move from line to line.

I lie here prostrated,

A feeble figure on a bed,

Pondering poetry, so complex with obscurity

That I cannot really understand.

What is the use of me?

Turn the page and try to grasp

Elusive meaning in the verse.

Evening here and soon the night

Will wander in. This room

Will fade and flicker, frailed with gloom.

And will my eyes, my sight die useless till the dawn?

Oh there the lawn glows green-grey. Autumn mist

Veils later roses. Birds persist.

A meaning in the verse?

Too deep for me.

Now I cannot see

The single lines. The book

Goes even as I look.

Too great, too great,

And I, so small,

Can merely meditate

And wonder at it all.

At last he turned, his eyes wide but their expression unreadable. Karen said, almost apologetically, her colour high, 'I write poetry sometimes. Like music, it's an escape route. I wrote that years ago when I was ill.'

Still he said nothing.

She blundered on, 'When I left school, I was so determined to get slim I almost starved myself to death. I had to have medical treatment. That's when I wrote that.' She sought his eyes uncertainly, wishing she could read his thoughts in them. What, she asked herself, in agony, was she looking for—encouragement, even praise? She saw nothing. 'I thought,' she pressed on, 'I thought it might do for the school magazine.'

She took his silence as disapproval and pushed in front of him, reaching out to the typewriter. The poem was ripped from the machine, clenched into a ball of paper and thrown into the waste paper basket.

Breathing heavily, she faced him. She wanted to cry at his implacable attitude as she had done in the old. days, to try again, anything to please him, to bring praise to his lips instead of criticism.

Bitterly she said, 'I've grown so used to censure from you, I should have known better than to expect anything else.'

He pushed his hands into his pockets. His expression gave nothing away. 'Go ahead, put it in the magazine.'

'And have everybody laugh at me?'

'Who's laughing at you?'

'You are,' she accused, 'deep inside. You always did, you always will.'

He stood squarely in front of her, putting his fist under her chin and forcing up her head. He stared into her eyes and he seemed to delve and dig like an archaeologist, hoping for a find, a priceless discovery.

'What's hidden beneath all that hair, I wonder? What's behind all that smokescreen of stiff, embittered spinsterhood?' He was almost talking to himself. 'An inferno? Aggression unlimited?' His gaze lowered to her body. 'I know, with a certain amount of filling in, what's underneath the clothes. But it's the mind that intrigues me, a mind that can carry such hatred down the years, such resentment, such anger, barely held in check.'

He slackened, like a man taking a rest from manual labour. 'I'll have to paint you to find it, to drag it out of your system and show it to you, to find it for myself, my own peace of mind. Something's got to ignite the fuse, to blow that bitterness out of you and, where I'm concerned, leave you sweet and clean inside.' He let her go, but his keen eyes did not miss her clasping, restless fingers. After a moment's silence he said, 'Will you model for me, Karen?'

Her fingers stilled, as if they were cemented together. 'Model for you? Stand in front of the class as I used to do at your command, to be humiliated and mocked, to give the class lessons in caricature?'

His eyes became slits, the slits incised and she bled, his victim again as she had been so many years ago. Her lips trembled and her teeth came down in an effort to control them. To get away from him, she carried the tray into the kitchen. When she returned, his coat was on. He left with a brief 'goodnight'.

Karen stared into the fire and let the tears spill over. A long time later, she looked in the waste paper basket. She unravelled every piece of crumpled paper. The poem had gone.

CHAPTER THREE

Christmas was not far away. The feeling of it was in the school, stalking the corridors and hanging around the decorated classrooms. It was in the minds of the girls and young men who, although their childhood was behind them, were still young enough to anticipate with pleasure the coming festivities.

After each meeting of the music club, Charles Vivian took Karen out for a meal. They did not always patronise the same restaurant but wherever they went, Karen noticed that Charles ate with dedication and a total abandonment of dietary rules.

Karen never allowed herself to eat much. Instead, she looked on a little bemusedly as Charles did more than justice to the portions placed in front of him. At first, she felt nothing but distaste for his large appetite, but gradually she came to expect and accept it. With a touch of something strangely like fear, she marvelled at how an individual, even someone like herself who, with her childhood memories always haunting her and who was repelled by overindulgence of any kind, could become conditioned to almost anything, given time and sufficient repetition.

One evening, she went to Honor's house for a fitting of the outfit she was making her. The blouse was blue with silver thread woven into it. The sleeves were long, the neckline plunging deep. The skirt was black and touched the inkles.

'The outfit will soon be finished,' Honor said, looking very satisfied with her handiwork. 'And mind you wear it for the New Year party.' Honor's husband, Monty, came in. He was burly and red-faced, a few years older than his wife, and from the shrewdness of his look, an astute businessman. He laughed a great deal and seemed to enjoy life, making the best of whatever came his way.

When Honor told him that Karen was virtually alone in the world, with not even a boy-friend in the offing, let alone a prospective husband, Monty said,

'We'll have to keep our eyes open and find a suitable type.'

Karen laughed and said that it sounded as if, on his travels round the art salerooms, he might be able to pick up a bargain cheap.

Monty laughed, but his laughter changed to a shake of the head as Karen told him she was perfectly happy to stay alone, unpartnered and solitary.

'Nonsense,' Monty said. 'Women were born to mate. What else do they exist for?'

Honor, squealing with a pretended annoyance, grabbed a wound-up tape measure and threw it at her husband, but he caught it and swung it round his head as if it were a lasso, and he was attempting to 'capture' her.

Karen watched the happy by-play between husband and wife with something very close to envy. There were not many men like Monty around, she reflected, not many marriages as deeply satisfactory as this one. She thought of Charles, who had his weaknesses—his preoccupation with food and drink, for instance, his fetish for self-indulgence.

She thought of Glenn Earl, with his innate cynicism and a look about him of—of what? Deep unhappiness? Inconsolable disappointment?

Karen put away the pity which threatened to follow her surprising character analysis of Glenn Earl. She would waste no compassion on him who, she was sure, possessed more self-reliance than anyone else she had known.

Charles took her to an afternoon concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London. She came away wrapped around in awe for the magnificent surroundings, hearing in her mind the orchestra's superb performance. Before leaving London, they dined, and for once she did justice to the food in front of her.

She had grown used to Charles's total concentration when studying the menu. It helped, she had discovered, to turn away her head and become absorbed in the other patrons.

Karen spent the remainder of the evening at Charles's house. He made coffee—the real thing, he said, no instant powder for him—and asked her, as they drank it, if she was happy.

Still hearing the sound of the orchestra in her ears, still seeing the tiers of seats filled with music-lovers like herself, and glorying in the fellow-feeling such an experience aroused, she said, 'Yes, wonderfully happy.'

He walked across the room, took her hand and asked her to marry him.

For hours afterwards, in the darkness of an Almost sleepless night, Karen reproached herself for her reaction to Charles's proposal of marriage.

It had been a reaction that was quite beyond her control. It had been instantaneous and instinctive. She had recoiled from Charles Vivian as if he had had some infectious illness. She recalled his look of pain at her unequivocal rejection of him. It brought back her own pain in the past when, in her childish eyes, the whole world had rejected her.

She had wanted to cry out at the hurt she had inflicted on him. The moment had been irreversible. She could not run it back like a piece of recording tape and erase it for ever.

After a few moments, he had recovered himself. 'I've reached the age,' he had said, 'when I've learnt the hard way to be patient. I shall, in due course, ask you again.'

There were end-of-term school plays acted by the younger pupils. There was a carol concert and a revue by the older students in which members of staff were mercilessly satirised. Even the headmaster and his deputy did not escape and were, it seemed, none too pleased.

'They should have grown used to it,' Glenn Earl said in the staff room. 'They've been in the job long enough.'

'Length of time,' Karen answered, 'doesn't necessarily blunt the serrated edges of mockery and sarcasm, especially when you're on the receiving end.'

There was an odd, questioning silence among the rest of the staff as Glenn and Karen stared at each other, he with a shellburst of anger, she as though she felt no greater hatred in the world than she did for this man.

Glenn Earl, possessing greater mental, as well as physical strength than herself, won the battle hands down. Karen's eyes dropped away and he turned his , back on her.

Charles went away for Christmas. He told Karen that he was going to his brother's and sister-in-law's. He gave her his present before he went. It was a large, enormously expensive bottle of perfume and a giant box of chocolates.

Karen was dismayed because she had not bought him any. kind of gift. When she told him how badly she felt about it, he replied that her friendship was a priceless year-round gift. 'What more could I want?' he asked.

Coming after her almost brutal rejection of him when he had asked her to marry him, his words brought tears to her eyes.

Karen had not planned anything for herself. Her holiday would be like a flat, endless plain, with no hills or valleys to relieve the monotony. Only Honor's and Monty's New Year's Eve party gave a gleam of brightness to an otherwise dreary outlook., '

The tenants upstairs, Mr and Mrs Carmichael, were planning to entertain visitors every day. Family mostly, they told Karen, their children and the little ones. In case the 'little ones' wandered downstairs, as they sometimes did when the grown-ups' attention was elsewhere, Karen decided to put a few chains across the ceiling, draped with glittering strips of foil and tinsel.

When she had been a child, her mother, she remembered, had kept the Christmas decorations from year to year in a box in the cupboard under the stairs. That was where Karen found them, wrapped like something precious, in tissue.

They improved the look of the room, she decided, making the high ceiling seem a little lower and the place more home-like, bringing back memories, not all of them painful.

It was Christmas Eve and Karen hurried to the shops to buy a packet of balloons. Tomorrow she would blow them up and hang them in the hall and living-room, just in case, she told herself, the children came down. In a drawer she put a few bars of chocolate. Perhaps, she admitted deep down, she was actually hoping the children would call on her. They would be the only visitors she would have...

On Christmas Day the Carmichaels' family arrived soon after breakfast. As Karen heard the tramp of feet up the stairs, the excited voices, the squeals of delight as presents were unwrapped, she stared into the winter-haunted garden, now stripped of foliage, with summer's flowers withered on their stalks. She could not quell a tight, tense longing to be part of a family, with a brother and a sister, and nieces and nephews to give presents to.

Sighing, she took the packet of balloons from the drawer and emptied the contents on to the table. It was not as easy as she thought to Inflate them and she wished she had bought a special balloon pump. They had had one in the shop.

The front door bell rang as she took a gasping breath and puffed yet again. The caller was for the Carmichaels because someone had answered the door. It was no good, the rubber of the balloons was too tough, too new to respond to her efforts. There was a noise behind her and she turned, her eyes expectant, to greet one of the children.

It was Glenn Earl in the doorway. He was smiling, but there was the familiar twist to his lips. The balloon was still in her mouth, the hand holding it there trembling just a little. Her face was red with effort, with shock—and with a devastating pleasure.

'Having trouble?' was all he said. He stretched out his hand.

Like a trusting child, she gave him the obstinate balloon. He put it to his lips without bothering to wipe it, although it was still wet from hers. The balloon came up into a great, scarlet sphere. He twisted the neck to prevent the air from escaping.

'Cotton?' he asked, still smiling.

Karen took a reel from her workbox and went towards him in a daze. She tied a length of cotton round the balloon, taking it from him and staring at him like a stupefied child. Haltingly, she thanked him.

'Any more?' he asked, amused by her bewildered air.

In response, she pressed two other balloons into his hand. 'Having a party?' he asked.

'No.' She paused. How much of herself would she be giving away if she told him the truth? 'Just brightening the place up in case the children come down.'

He looked at the balloons he had inflated, then slowly, thoughtfully, raised his eyes to give her a searching glance, but all he said was, 'Drawing pins?'

Karen gave him a box and he fixed the balloons to the picture rail which ran all round the room a little below ceiling-height.

She asked, her voice as expressionless as she could make it, 'Why did you come?'

His back was to her and he shrugged. 'Maybe I was feeling in need of company.' Karen remembered Honor's words. 'Glenn has few friends.'

'And mine was better than nothing?'

He stepped down from the chair on which he had been standing. 'Sour? On Christmas Day? It is, so they say, the season of goodwill, towards women as well as men.' He held out his hand. 'Pax?'

There was no alternative but to put hers into his. He did not shake her hand, but held it, turning it over and inspecting it as if examining the work-hardened details before making a drawing. 'Pax,' Karen whispered.

There was the faintest movement on his part, an impelling of her towards him which was so subtle it might have been taking place in Karen's imagination. Karen's fingers trembled just a little in his. If it had been anybody else's hand imprisoning hers, she might have thought that the pulling sensation, like a magnet asserting its power over a weaker object, was fact and not fiction, was real instead of taking place only in her mind ...

Footsteps came pattering along the hall and the tension slackened. Karen thought, Why do my legs feel strange?

A small girl about seven years old watched from the door. Karen turned to look at her and Glenn followed her eyes. The child's gaze went from Glenn to Karen and back to Glenn, then settled on their clasped hands.

'Are you married?' the little girl asked.

'No, Melissa,' Karen said, smiling.

'Nor ever likely to be,' said Glenn.

'We're not even friends,' said Karen.

'Then why are you holding hands?'

'Because it's Christmas,' Glenn asserted easily. 'Everyone likes everyone else at Christmas.' He looked down at Karen. 'When it's over, we'll go back to hating each other.'

Karen jerked her hand from his and rubbed it against her jeans as if his touch had defiled it. He watched the movement with irony in his smile.

Melissa walked into the room. 'Have you had any presents?' she asked.

'One or two,' Karen told her.

'That all? I've had hundreds.'

'Little girls should,' Karen remarked with a smile.

'So should big girls,' said Glenn, with a grin.

The 'big girl' to whom he had no doubt referred ignored him. Instead she asked Melissa, 'Like some chocolate?' Melissa nodded and watched as Karen went to the sideboard drawer. 'Here's a bar of chocolate for you, one for Rob and one for Baby Jonathan.'

'Jonathan's too young. My mummy says so.'

'Then you eat it for him, pet.'

Melissa nodded and pulled at Karen's arm. Guessing her intention, Karen bent down. Melissa placed a smacking kiss on Karen's cheek. Karen hugged her tightly for a moment, clinging just a few seconds longer than she needed to. Then the child-had gone.

As Karen straightened, she caught a curious look in Glenn's eyes. Pity? No, she couldn't bear his pity. Whatever it was, he had banished it from his mind without further thought, because he said,

'If I gave you a present, would you thank me like that?'

Karen glanced up at him and saw the curling mockery of his smile.

'I'd give the present right back to you,' Karen answered quietly.

The twisted smile died and he lifted his shoulders, then he wandered round, looking at the handful of Christmas cards displayed on the sideboard. He did not miss Charles's presents, although they had been pushed to the back.

Glenn turned, eyebrows raised. 'Got a rich boyfriend?'

To her annoyance, Karen coloured. 'From Charles.'

'Well, well,' the cynicism taunted, 'who'd have thought Charles Vivian had it in him? Men don't usually give women such expensive presents for nothing.'

The enmity was back, no doubt about it. 'What exactly are you implying?'

'What do you think?' he said contemptuously. 'By heaven, you must be hard up for a man.'

'Is that why you came?' she cried. 'To insult me?'

He went on in the same hard tone, 'He'll be proposing marriage next.'

'He already has,' she threw at him triumphantly.

Glenn swung round from the Christmas card he was inspecting. 'And you accepted?'

After a pause, Karen muttered, 'No.'

Another pause, then, 'Are you cooking yourself a Christmas dinner?'

'I never have Christmas dinner.'

'That makes two of us. Will you come out to lunch with me?'

'I told you,' defensively, 'I never eat Christmas dinner.'

'Where I'm taking you, you won't get it.'

Karen looked down at herself. 'I can't go out to lunch dressed like this.'

'Where I'm taking you, they wouldn't even notice if you walked in in a two-piece swimsuit.'

All the same, Karen, leaving him with a murmured apology, went into her bedroom. As she pulled on well-fitting blue pants and a figure-hugging long-sleeved top, she did not ask herself 'why?' Why had he asked her? Why was she going with him? A comb through her hair, a touch of make-up, a change of shoes, and she was ready.

His raised eyebrows as he looked her over proved that he had not missed the change of clothes, the new colour in her cheeks put there, not with the aid of cosmetics, but by an unwanted but inextinguishable excitement.

The drive through the quiet streets was silent. Glenn Earl never seemed to speak unless it was necessary to communicate something that needed to be said. Karen thought, At least we're alike in that respect. No necessity to dredge my brain for meaningless words, merely to make contact. Why, she mused, did people always seek to break silence? It was, at times, a balm and, these days, so rare it was almost beyond price.

The restaurant was full. There were mirrors all around and everywhere Karen looked, she saw herself. She was surrounded by herself and she wondered what all of her were doing there, in a restaurant, a way-out one, with Glenn Earl on Christmas Day.

There was none of Charles Vivian's gallantry about Glenn Earl. He showed no interest in the menu. Instead, it was Karen who picked it up and studied it, wondering with a wry smile what Charles would have made of its contents. He would probably have recoiled at the foreign-sounding dishes, the exotic titles given to some of the items, the names so oriental that the spiciness of them almost burned a hole in the cardboard on Which they were printed.

Karen could see in the mirror next to them that Glenn was watching her, too. As she looked up frowning, colouring slightly at his regard, he smiled and indicated the menu. 'Try an omelette. They're tasty and wholesome and a speciality of the place.'

An omelette on Christmas Day? Why not? Karen thought. With Glenn Earl sitting opposite her, anything was possible. Karen nodded and when the slant-eyed waitress approached, Glenn gave the order.

The customers were as exotic as the items on the menu. Here were gathered people of all races and creeds, colours and shades, aesthetic-looking with dreaming eyes, rich people poorly dressed; couples with children climbing over their laps. Artists, poets, writers—their artistic calling was unmistakable.

How, Karen wondered, did Glenn Earl, painter, schoolteacher, restless of manner, biting of tongue, fit into it all? She gazed at his reflection in the mirror and there was a man she did not know. None of the teacher about him now, the man in charge of other teachers. His clothes were casual, his cream-coloured sweater with its turnover collar emphasising the darkness of his hair. Around his chin she discerned a dark shadow, as if that morning he had given himself the briefest of shaves.

The man she was gazing at fascinated, repelled, yet drew her. Try as she might, she could not temper her hatred for him with any softer feeling. The essence of him, she mused, was elusive, defying analysis or interpretation. It irritated her that she could not pin him down, classify him as a type and then, for her own satisfaction, tear him to pieces. She could not rip apart an indefinable quality.

Their eyes met in the mirror and, deeply embarrassed, Karen dropped hers first. To her fury, Karen felt the colour tinge her cheeks. What had be been doing, she Wondered. Trying to analyse her, too, classify her, pin her down? From the smile she had caught on his face, it seemed that he had succeeded where she had failed. He had not only pinned her down, he had hammered the pins home until the blood spurted.

'Well,' he said, 'do you know me any better for that searching dissection of my character?' Karen, her cheeks still warm, moved her head vaguely from side to side. 'Do you,' he persisted, 'like me any better, or think even worse of me for what you have found?'

The customary cynicism was in his voice and, as it always had done, it nettled her. She studied the set of the cutlery and it registered in an abstracted sort of way that Charles would not have approved of the restaurant. She moved the cutlery around and immediately replaced it. She could not bear disorder, in her life or anything else.

'It's Christmas Day,' she answered, evading the question. 'There's a cease-fire between us. You shouldn't ask such questions in the circumstances. And,' she raised her head, 'you've been kind and taken pity on me and are paying for my lunch. So I must keep to myself all the nasty things I might otherwise say about you. I promise you,' she smiled, 'I'll store them all up and use them in evidence against you when we're back to normal.'

He rearranged his own cutlery but, unlike Karen, he did not replace it in its correct position. 'You've smiled at me. That's almost a Christmas present in itself.'

Karen looked at him, touched in spite of herself, seeking for mockery, but the expression on his face was in a foreign language, and inexperienced as she was in her dealings with men, she was no linguist. It was beyond her understanding.

She shrugged, thinking, Why should I bother about what he thinks of me? I mean no more to him than someone with whom to spend a few otherwise empty hours.

The waitress placed the food on the table. Slim and attractive, Karen had to concede that she deserved the frank admiration Glenn turned on her as she leant across him.

Karen thought, He'll never look at me like that. Then she pulled herself up. Did she want him to?

Glenn ordered wine. When it came he said, lifting his glass, 'Drink—to our enmity. Long may it survive. Such hatred is the very stuff from which works of art are born.'

He downed his drink in one swallow. Karen put the glass to her lips, barely dampening them. It was a toast to which she was oddly reluctant to drink.

They had almost finished the meal when there was a disturbance at the door. Voices were raised and there was laughter and jeering between friends. Glenn, whose back was to the newcomers, stiffened.

Karen watched the group. There were three men and a woman. She was full-figured, girlish despite her age which Karen judged to be a little over thirty. She was gipsy-like with her raven black hair, dangling gilt earrings and low-cut blouse. She stood, looking for a table, with the men grouped around her.

The woman's eyes, brown and large, settled on Karen. She spoke a few words over her shoulder, laughed up at her companions and with them trailing behind, she moved slowly across the room.

Glenn was staring at the whiteness of the tablecloth as if it was too bright for his eyes. 'Glenn,' said the woman, standing beside him. 'Darling.' Her hand moved down his head to the back of his neck, caressing, stroking. The three men stood in single file behind her.

'Darling,' she murmured huskily, 'look at Monique.' Glenn did not move. The woman rested her fingers on the table. 'Darling, have you got yourself a new girlfriend?' Those brown eyes, intense, deep with latent violence, inspected Karen. 'Have you made love to her?' The woman's hand moved insinuatingly across Glenn's shoulders. 'Is she anything like me, darling? Do you fight like cat and flog as we did?'

Glenn's hand came up, his fingers gripped her arm and flung her hand away.

'Karen,' he scraped back his chair, 'put on your coat. You,' he turned on the woman, 'keep away from me.'

The other customers, broad minded, deaf to lovers' quarrels, took the argument in their stride.

Glenn gripped Karen's wrist and pulled her past the woman he had so harshly rejected. He shouldered to one side the male companions who were blocking the way to the exit and put Karen outside the door. 'Wait there.' He settled the bill and joined her.

He looked up and down the street and swung across the road, leaving Karen to catch up with him. She remembered Charles's words. 'There's still a link between them. They say she keeps going back to him.'

Despite the woman's objectionable manner, Karen allowed herself to feel sorry for her. He had treated her badly over the baby, hadn't he, divorcing her when she lost it? Then to speak to her in public as he had spoken to her just now...

'Where are we going?' Karen panted behind him.

'I'm going to the park. You can come—if you want.'

Karen stopped in her tracks and turned to look in a shop window. The shop was closed, of course, but the slogans still shouted their message. 'Yuletide Greetings to all our customers'. 'Give a little present and a lot of pleasure'. 'Merry Christmas! Have yourself a happy time'! The decorated tree with its tinsel and imitation snow held a subtle mockery all its own. This is Christmas Day, Karen thought, and I'm crying. And I'm alone again.

*

It had begun to rain when she let herself into the empty house. The family upstairs had gone out.

Karen's hair was dripping on to her coat. She got a fire going and sat in front of it, towelling her hair. Alternately she stared and rubbed, stared and rubbed. The thoughts in her head disturbed her so much she wanted to rub them away with the wetness.

Her hair had been dry for some time when the door bell rang. With the towel in her hand and! her hair looking like a bush, she went to the door. Glenn stood on the step. She grew confused at the sight of him and put the towel behind her.

'Aren't you going to ask me in?' The words were familiar, the voice tired.

He was dripping wet. He must have been walking for hours. Karen took the towel from behind her back and offered it to him, but he shook his head.

'I'm sorry about what happened,' he said.

'It doesn't matter.' Her voice was dull. 'Thank you for the lunch.'

He turned to go. Something made her say, 'Glenn.' It was the first time she had ever used his first name and it sounded strange. It must have sounded strange to him because he turned.

She heard herself say, 'I—I must repay you for the meal. Would you come to tea tomorrow?'

Immediately she regretted her impetuosity, because his expression hardened. 'There's no need to push the season of goodwill to its limits,' he said coldly.

A pain shot through her, hurting her limbs as though a moving vehicle had sent her flying against a brick wall. She was back in her childhood skin again, the butt of his sarcasm.

'Forget it,' she said, and moved down the hall, leaving him to close the door behind him.

'What time?' Glenn asked.

She did not turn. She knew she must not let him see how pleased his acceptance had made her. She folded the towel and smoothed her hair. 'Whenever you like. Fourish?'

'Four-thirty. And Karen ‑' She turned at last, looking over her shoulder. 'Thanks.'

All morning Karen baked—mince pies, shortbread, small cakes. She hard-boiled eggs, grated cheese and made sandwiches. 'I would have done it for any visitor,' she told herself. 'It's not just for Glenn Earl.' Besides, she thought, for once in her life she wanted to do something that would please him. Hadn't she tried in the past and hadn't she always failed?

In the early afternoon she changed into a bright red dress, one she had bought when Honor had told her she needed brightening up. Then she sat and stared into the fire. There was nothing else to do because everything was ready. Her pulses were throbbing. It's because someone's coming, she told herself, because I'm not going to be alone again today.

The family upstairs was getting ready for a party. Christmassy smells crept down the stairs, of wine and rich cake and mince pies, and for once Karen did not reject them. For once she was part of the festivities.

I've got a visitor of my own, she thought again. He was a little late, but he would come.

An hour after he had promised to arrive, the telephone rang. It was a signal and Karen knew what it meant. There was, she thought, no need to answer it really.

'Karen? I'm sorry to have to let you down. My wife's here ‑'

Karen swallowed. 'Your wife?'

'I'm sorry,' the words came slowly, carefully, wearily, like a man having to sort out his thoughts after an emotional disturbance, 'my ex-wife. I can't get away. Has it put you out?'

'No,' Karen lied, 'not at all. It hasn't affected me at all. Thanks for ringing.'

The receiver was cushioned on its cradle, the hand that placed it there was shaking. 'She keeps going back to him,' Charles had said. Which meant they slept together now and then and which meant they were not really divorced at all. Who could blame him? She was attractive enough and, in a hard, ruthless way, so was he.

Karen put all the cakes and pies she had baked, the sandwiches she had made, on a tray and took them upstairs to Mrs Carmichael. For the rest of the evening the television stayed on. Karen watched with her eyes, but with her mind she was listening in on the joyous family party going on over her head.

It was New Year's Eve and Monty threw the door wide. He helped Karen off with her coat, then caught her under the mistletoe which hung over the living-room doorway.

He kissed her soundly before she could stop him. 'It's all right,' Monty said, 'I've got my wife's permission. She's let me off the leash tonight, and I'm going to kiss 'em all, especially the young and pretty ones,'

He held her round the waist and shouted, 'Glenn, come on. Catch her while she's off her guard!'

Glenn strolled out of the dining-room and down the hall towards her.

Karen shook her head. 'No, thanks. I'm choosy in that respect, even though it is New Year's Eve.'

'Oh-h,' Monty drew a long breath, 'my word, she's sharp tonight. Watch your arteries, boy, or you might find yourself bleeding to death before the night's over. I consider myself honoured—she let me kiss her.'

'You're different,' Karen said, smiling and slanting a lightning glance at Glenn. 'You're nice, Monty.'

Monty nudged Glenn, whose hands were in his pockets and whose eyes glinted narrowly. A muscle twitched in his cheek.

'Implying you aren't, Glenn,' Monty said, laughing. 'She's got her knife in you, man. I tell you, she'll slaughter you before the clock strikes twelve.'

'Let her try.' The words were a biting challenge. Glenn's eyes roved all over her, settling now and then in a calculating, male sort of way, on the most feminine aspects of her shape.

Karen, forced back into self-consciousness and uncertainty by the intensity of his gaze, folded her arms defensively across her waist. Then she cursed herself for letting him know how a look from him could still affect her.

'Just let her try,' Glenn repeated. 'I'll be ready. I may be ten years older than she is, but my cutting edges haven't yet been blunted by my advancing age.'

'Who's talking about slaughtering?' Honor called from the kitchen. 'I'll slaughter you, Monty, if you don't come and give me a hand.' Honor came into the hall. 'Karen I My word, although I say it myself, that outfit's great!'

Monty smiled at his wife. 'Modest, isn't she?'

'What I mean is,' Honor ignored her husband, 'it suits you even better than I thought it might.'

'She certainly looks fit to eat. Eh, Glenn?' Monty said.

'No comment,' said Glenn.

'Oh, come on, man, it's New Year's Eve. Commit yourself.'

Glenn walked into the living-room and one by one the others followed him.

'No, thanks,' Glenn said, 'I've learnt my lesson. Where females are concerned, I never commit myself these days. As a species they're too dangerous. I paint them, I'll even make love to them if that's what they want, but commit myself? Never, again.'

Other guests arrived and Honor and Monty went into the hall to greet them. Karen, to her dismay, found herself alone with Glenn. He strolled to the window and inspected the lights on the Christmas tree. Their colours were caught and held by the blackness beyond the uncurtained window. Their reflection, Karen thought abstractedly, was, if anything, more intriguing, more elusively beautiful than the tangible reality of them.

Glenn said, with his back to her, 'I'm sorry about the other day. I—er—got tied up.'

'I'm sure you did.'

He turned at her tone, but she had made her face carefully blank.

'Maybe,' he said, 'you'll ask me again some time?'

'I think that's very unlikely.' His eyebrows lifted. 'It wasn't the first time I went out of my way to please you, only to have my efforts treated with contempt.'

'For God's sake, you're not plunging back into the past again? What terrible deeds are you holding against me now, and after all that water under all those bridges?'

'You really want to know?'

'No, but you're dying to tell me.'

'All right,' she flung back, roused to anger by his sarcastic tone, 'I was about thirteen. Every drawing I had produced, you treated with scorn. So I started practising at home, trying to improve my efforts. I persuaded my mother-to buy me a box of paints—it wasn't easy because she couldn't really spare the money—and I painted a picture especially for you. I put my heart into it because I wanted your approval. I painted the fireplace with its flames leaping up the chimney. I knew the fire well—I often used to stare into those flames, imagining your face was burning in them.'

He smiled, but there was no joy in it, only the usual derision. 'You loved me, didn't you? Well, carry on With your heart-rending tale.'

She moistened her lips, torn by his unrelenting cynicism. 'I gave it to you at your desk. I thought you'd be so pleased with it. And for once my wish came true. You thanked me and said how much you liked it and that you might even pin it up on open day.'

Karen stopped. Even now the memory hurt.

'Well?' He rearranged a piece of tinsel on the tree.

There was high-pitched, festive laughter from the hall, a shout from Monty and answering shout from one of his friends.

'When the class was over,' Karen went on, 'and everyone had gone, I went back into the art room to make sure you'd taken my painting and that it wasn't just lying on your desk. The picture had gone. But you hadn't got it. It was lying in bits on top. of the waste paper basket.'

She glanced at him, but it was plain that she had not even begun to touch the essence of him. 'There's nothing I can do about it now, is there?' he responded, quite unmoved. 'So stop being so bloody petty.' He frowned. 'Look, if it's still needling you that I let you down the other day, I told you, I just couldn't get away. The circumstances were beyond my control. I can't explain ‑'

'Don't even bother to try.'

The door opened and the new arrivals came in. During the evening, as the party spirit grew louder and the drink flowed faster, Karen put as much distance between herself and Glenn Earl as the room would allow. It was not difficult, since he held himself aloof when the others played games. Most of the time there was a glass in his hand, but Karen doubted if he actually drank much.

She felt rather than saw his eyes on her as she moved about the room. She joined in the games because Monty would not allow her to do otherwise. If she was left standing alone, at a nudge from his wife he would go across and partner her.

The guests unloaded themselves of their adult status as if it were as cumbersome as a fur coat in a hothouse. Glenn helped willingly enough in arranging the furniture for Musical Chairs and distributing paper and pencils for the more intellectual games, but he resisted all attempts to drag him into the circle and join in.

Until someone suggested Postman's Knock. Monty simply would not hear of Glenn's staying out. 'Come on, man,' he said with a touch of impatience. 'This is a party, not a meeting of the Arts Council. Let your barriers down for once.'

So Glenn joined in, but with a reluctance that could not be mistaken for anything but the real thing. With a nod he accepted the number that was given to him.

'Men odds, girls evens,' said Honor in a whisper as her husband went outside. 'Choose an even number, Monty,' she called, 'between fifty and seventy.'

'Sixty,' he shouted.

'That's me,' said Honor, against the background of laughter. She went into the hall and a series of noisy kisses came through the door. There was more laughter as Monty came in wiping the lipstick from his mouth.

The numbers were changed and Honor chose a number allocated to a tall, handsome young man called Douglas. She came in swooning. Douglas chose the number belonging to a redhead and he returned saying, 'If I had a tail, I'd be wagging it off.'

The redhead selected Glenn's number. Collecting his long, lean limbs from the chair in which he was spread, he strolled outside. The girl returned, mopping imaginary perspiration from her forehead.

'Choose an odd number,' called Honor, 'between five and twenty-five.'

There was a pause, then, 'Twenty-five.'

'Karen,' came a loud stage whisper from Monty. 'Go on, girl!' Karen held back and he pulled her from her chair. 'Fair's fair, all the other's have gone. Out you go.' He opened the door and pushed her out, closing it with a snap.

Glenn was staring at a painting in a gilt frame on the wall. He turned with indifference and saw her. He did not seem surprised. Karen decided that he must have heard Monty's loud whisper. She looked at him uncertainly and walked across to sit on the stairs. He plainly had no intention of kissing her. Why should he? There was no one there to referee, no one to see that the kiss was duly administered. Anyway, she told herself, clenching her fists, he was the last person whose lips she wanted on her own.

He moved, stopped, seemed to make up his mind and walked to the stairs to stand at the foot. ^!I suppose you're expecting me to kiss you?'

'No, I'm not,' she said quickly. 'Thank you.' Delicately she arranged her skirt around her ankles. 'You can go in now.'

'Yes, I will.' There was resolution in his tone. 'When I've done my duty.' He pulled at her hands and she was down the stairs and looking up at him. She felt the hardness of him, the tension—did he hate so much what he was about to do?—she had never been so near to him before. Her senses reeled—with distaste, she told herself desperately, with hate; it was nothing else. She brought up her hands to push against his chest, but he caught them and pressed them there.

'It's time,' he muttered, 'that someone violated those unbelievably prim, tight lips of yours.' His eyes moved downwards, resting on the soft curve of her breasts as they pressed against him. 'If nothing else.'

He contemplated his target and her mind showed her pictures like a film being run at too fast a speed. It was twelve years before and she was thirteen. A boy, about a year older than she was, had called her number at a party.

She had joined him in the hall and he had looked at her. A sick expression had come into his face. His eyes, like a garden roller on a badly-laid lawn, had bumped and delved all over her bulging, overweight body.

You're no good, he had said, you're no good to any man. And he had gone back into the room without touching her.

Would this man, standing so close to her now, his fingers on her shoulders pressing painfully into her flesh, reject her as brutally?

'Come on, get on with it!' Monty called.

Glenn's head came down, his mouth parted hers— and her legs almost let her down. The kiss was like sui experiment, like the tasting of a new food, the sampling of a new wine. His mouth lingered, explored, tested, passing judgment. There was none of the roughness she had expected. The tensing of her body, the straining of her mind as if to ward off a blow had all been unnecessary.

Gentleness, tenderness, consideration ... The words drifted through her mind like cirrus clouds against a high summer sky. Boring, dull, tedious ... That was more like it. He let her go at last and she hit the earth.

'Break it up!' Monty shouted. 'Give the other chaps a chance, Glenn.'

Karen sought Glenn's eyes, but they were like an ancient stone tablet covered in hieroglyphics. They were full of words, of meaning, of discovery, but she could interpret none of it. Defeated, she sank to the stairs and sat there, waiting. He went inside the room and closed the door.

CHAPTER FOUR

Charles greeted Karen in the staff room with a kiss on both cheeks. It was the lunch break and the other teachers looked on, Glenn among them.

'My dear,' Charles murmured, 'it's good to see you.' He patted the chair beside him. 'Tell me about how you spent the holiday.'

Glenn dropped into a chair, put his feet on the table and, as usual, his head behind a magazine.

Karen told Charles about the New Year's Eve party, but little else. He told her at length about his stay with his brother and family, going into excruciating detail about the way his sister-in-law had fed them, and how he was sure he had put on weight as a result. He patted himself. 'However, a little more won't notice, will it?'

'You should really watch what you eat, Charles,' Karen said. 'It isn't good for you to keep adding to your weight.'

'Solicitous for my health?' He leaned forward, cruelly compressing the bulge in front of him, and patted her hand. 'That's a good sign. It gives me hope.' He seemed to be at pains to tell the world of his intentions.

Glenn recrossed his feet on the table and flicked over a page.

'All the same, love of food, like my partiality for your smile, is a weakness I refuse to forswear.'

Glenn swept his feet to the floor and flung the magazine down.

'Karen.' She looked up as he stood in front of her. Charles's eyes lifted and blandly contemplated the stony face above him. 'If ray callous treatment of your works of art upset you as much in the past as you say it did, then you're welcome to come along to the art department whenever I'm free so that I can go some way towards making amends for my past misdeeds. I'll even give you a crash course in art, if that's what you want.' He looked at his watch, a gold one with a wide strap that compressed the dark hairs on his arms. 'I'm free now.'

As he turned away, another teacher claimed Charles's attention. 'Can you advise me, Mr Vivian?' the young woman asked.

Karen was sorry for the woman, who had a disturbed domestic life, but she told herself she was not prepared to sit there and listen while the teacher poured out her heart to Charles. She rose, making her excuses to the other two. Charles nodded absently and Karen crept away.

Her feet took her of their own free will towards the art room, and she did nothing to stop their wayward behaviour. Glenn's back was turned as she went in. He was looking through a pile of sketches on the windowsill. His office was small and every available space was filled. He seemed to know she was there.

'Have a look round,' he said, indicating the art room. 'I'll join you in a minute.'

There were easels, benches, cartridge paper stacked beside a guillotine. Round the walls were pictures by the students—still life, drawings of each other, even one of Glenn Earl. On the windowsill were clay models, on the floor heaps of soft, earth-coloured clay. There were two potters' wheels and a couple of kilns.

'It's changed,' Karen said as he came to stand beside her, 'almost beyond recognition.'

He nodded. 'More and better equipment. The local authority's a little more generous these days towards the art side of education, less prone to condemn it as a mere pastime. They acknowledge at last that it's an essential part of the school curriculum and I for one am grateful for their enlightenment.'

Karen strolled to the window and leaned on the sill, looking out at the view. 'A lifetime seems to have passed since I—suffered here.' She glanced over her shoulder, but her words did not appear to have been heard. Glenn was inspecting a model a child had made.

Karen turned back to the view. 'It's even changed out there. More roofs, more roads, more traffic.' She half-closed her eyes. 'The times I stared out of these windows, longing to be down there, free of this room and its miseries. Free of you.'

He thrust the clay model down so hard it shattered.

He swore, swept the pieces into his hand and threw them away. 'Hell, no,' he said sarcastically. 'I mustn't do that, must I?' He bent down and painstakingly picked the pieces out of the waste bin. 'If I chuck the thing in there, I might inflict some terrible trauma on some other unfortunate child, for which it would bear me a grudge all its long life. I've got enough with one neurotic female on my conscience without adding another.' He put the pieces in a pile on the shelf. 'Later, I'll apologise nicely to the girl, then perhaps I'll be forgiven.'

Karen smiled at the window pane and said nothing.

'Now,' he said, 'I invited you here to tell you about my new teaching technique, to let you know how nicely I treat the little boys and girls these days.'

Karen opened her eyes wide. 'You mean to say you've actually stopped castigating and humiliating the poor creatures, even if they're as dim as I was at art?'

'You say much more, my girl,' his fingers settled round the back of her neck and she shivered at his touch, 'and I'll march you out of this room by the scruff of your neck.'

She shook herself free of him, trying at the same time to throw off the effect the touch of him had on her. She wandered round restlessly. 'It wouldn't be the first time. But it's all right, my emotions wear a bulletproof vest nowadays. I'm not nearly so vulnerable as I used to be where you're concerned.'

'What exactly does that mean?'

Karen frowned, surprised at her own words. She didn't know, she wished she did. 'Carry on, Mr Earl,' she said, her tone light to divert him from pressing the question. She pointed to a drawing on the wall. 'What's this, for instance?'

'That,' he said, 'has been drawn with a matchstick dipped in ink. Some kids draw more naturally that way than with a pencil. Some use charcoal. Others express themselves better by means of paper. For instance, a "stream" can be a long curving strip of white paper. "Boulders" dropping on to it can be black paper cut to various shapes and stuck on.'

He told her to close her eyes, then he put an object into her hands. 'Tell me what it is.'

Obediently, she felt the object all over. 'Four legs and a tail. An animal.' She tried again. 'Long, pointed nose. A dog?'

'What breed of dog?'

'That's difficult.' She hazarded, 'A sheepdog?'

'Wrong.' He took it away. 'A labrador.' He pushed a pencil into her hand and gave her some paper. 'Draw it.' She protested that it was too difficult without actually seeing the model, but he insisted.

He stood beside her and she was back again, the years stripped away, wanting to do something, anything, to please him. He watched as she struggled to put down on paper what she had felt with her fingers.

He judged the result. 'Not bad. That, in case you don't know, is training in the basic transference of yourself into another form, a getting "under the skin", if you like, of an object and then expressing it in personal terms.'

Karen looked at him, half-smiling. 'Aren't you going to tear the drawing up?' She turned her head away. 'I'm not looking.'

'Provoke me much more, Karrie Durrant,' he said through his teeth, 'and I'll not be able to keep my hands off you.'

She walked away, trembling inwardly. The thought of his hands touching her at all caught her under the ribs, making it momentarily difficult to breathe. After a moment she said, 'Just lash me with your tongue instead, as you did when I was a child. What's this?' She pointed to a large display pinned to the wall.

He came to join her, and she was immediately conscious of him beside her, relaxed, hands in pockets, his hard, good-looking face a little uplifted as he examined, with the eye of an expert, the work they were looking at.

He was taller than she had remembered him to be, possessing a self-confidence which, even now, she both envied and resented. His cynicism had, if anything, deepened over the years. There was a toughness about him now, and a wall, built around him so strong and high she doubted if any woman would ever batter her way through it again.

With a nod he indicated the display on the wall. 'The answer to your question is that it's called collage.' There were railway tickets, cigarette packets, sugar wrappers and dress labels, placed together on a sheet of paper. 'It's intended,' he explained, 'to show unexpected relationships and qualities in vastly different objects by putting them together into an entirely new context.'

Karen moved away and he followed her. 'We teach the kids to see and experience, not merely to look simply just to verify the facts, yet feel nothing.' He put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her round to face him. 'Do you realise you can look at something a hundred times without really seeing it?' There was a short significant pause. 'Which is what you're doing with Charles Vivian, if you but knew it.'

The atmosphere at once became strained. Karen compressed her lips and said tartly, 'My relationship with Charles Vivian is my own business.' She looked at the wall clock. 'It's late. I've got a class. Thanks for the conducted tour, not to mention the belated, if abortive, attempt to teach me to draw.'

His face was impassive as she gave him a sharp look, aware as she walked away that he was watching her.

The bus droned from one stop to the other. It was a freezing morning in mid-January. Even the puddles carried a layer of ice. The passengers clambered into the bus like newborn lambs seeking the warmth of their mother's body.

As the bus pulled away from the kerb, a boy came lumbering up beside it and hoisted himself on. He looked for a seat, saw the empty space beside Karen and puffed and panted himself into it. ' 'Morning, Miss Durrant,' he said.

'Hallo, Jerome.' A ponderous name, Karen had always thought, to go with a rather ponderous outline.

The boy paid his fare and patted his chest. 'Too fat, that's my trouble.'

He was fifteen and an enthusiastic member of Charles Vivian's music club. Surprisingly so, Karen considered, for a boy with such a background as his. 'I know how you feel, Jerome. I used to be like you.'

'You, miss? But you've got a smashin' figure!'

Karen laughed. 'Thanks for that, but believe it or not, at your age I was even bigger than you. I ate all the wrong foods——'

'I expect that's my trouble. My mum died three years ago and my dad didn't know what to do. He couldn't cook, couldn't do anything. Mr Vivian came round and talked to Dad, then he got us a home help. Now we're a bit older, me and my brother look after ourselves. We get pies and sausages from the supermarket. My brother's fat, too.' Karen remembered seeing a younger edition of Jerome plodding about the school. 'Sometimes,' Jerome went on, 'Mr Vivian takes us both out to tea. He gives us smashin' stuff to eat.' He glanced at Karen with curiosity. 'How did you get like you are miss?'

'Starved myself until I became ill. I wouldn't advise you to do that, Jerome.' There was a short silence, then Karen asked, 'How do you get on with the other boys?'

'Oh, the boys are all right. It's the girls—they laugh at me.'

'I know just how you feel about that, too. Everyone laughed at me. The teachers—what are they like?'

'All right.'

Something made Karen ask, 'What about—Mr Earl?'

He made a face. 'Not so good. He doesn't like me. Too fat, I expect.'

So, Karen thought furiously, Glenn Earl's still at it!

'Trouble with him,' Jerome was saying, 'he's like my dad, no wife. All men should have them. Otherwise they go funny.'

Karen laughed again. 'Do they? But Mr Vivian hasn't got a wife.'

He patted his stomach. 'He's got this instead!'

Karen left Jerome at the school entrance. 'See you tonight, miss?' he called after her.

'At the music club? Yes, Jerome, I'll be there.'

All day there was no sign of Glenn Earl. Karen, to her annoyance, found herself looking for him. She was angry, she told herself, angry about his attitude to young Jerome.

At the music club after school, Charles sat on one side of Karen and Jerome on the other. The boy was totally absorbed by the music. Such involvement, Karen thought, must surely indicate latent musical ability.

Afterwards, Charles said he would be staying on to see the parents of a boy in his class, but he would call and see her during the evening, provided she had no objection. Karen tried to find one, although she did not know why, but in the end she told him that he would be welcome.

Jerome left the school building at Karen's side. The ground, where the winter sun had temporarily thawed it, had frozen again. They slithered along the school drive and Karen slid on a bad patch of ice which had been made worse by the homegoing crowds of schoolchildren.

Jerome did his best to grab her arm, but he missed and she fell heavily on to her side, hitting her shoulder on the way down on the concrete-encased waste-paper bin. She lay there winded and in pain.

'You all right, miss?' Jerome asked, genuinely concerned. He had the sympathy and compassion of most people of his proportions.

Karen nodded. 'Help me up, Jerome?'

He put his hands awkwardly round her arms and as he tried to lift her, her feet slid again on the ice. She held on to the waste bin and hauled herself upright.

A long, low sports car moved slowly along the drive and Jerome waved it down.

'Mr Earl,' Jerome shouted, 'Miss Durrant's hurt. She fell over.'

It would have to be Glenn Earl, Karen thought fiercely, trying to take the weight off her right leg which she seemed to have damaged.

'Now what have you done?' Glenn got out of the car.

As if, Karen thought petulantly, I was always doing something! 'I'm all right.' She clung to the waste bin. 'You can go away.'

But he did not go away. He half lifted, half walked her to the car. 'And you, Meller.' His tone was peremptory, but the boy did not seem to notice the fact. Jerome hurried, as fast as the ice would allow, to open the front passenger door and held it while Glenn half pushed, half eased Karen into the car. Then Jerome let himself into the back.

'Where do you live, Meller?' Glenn asked, releasing the hand-brake and moving on.

Jerome told him. 'It's not far, sir. It's a nice car, sir.'

'Yes.'

Karen filled the taut silence, smothering her irritation at Glenn's attitude to his young passenger. 'Has your father got a car, Jerome?' she asked.

'No, miss. He wouldn't know how to drive it if he had. I told you, miss, he can't do anything, my dad!'

Karen laughed, expecting Glenn to do the same, but not a flicker passed across his cynical mouth.

This turning, sir,' Jerome said quickly. 'Drop me here, sir, and I'll walk the rest. Hope you'll be all right, miss.' He thanked Glenn profusely for the lift— at which Glenn nodded—and went on his way.

As they drove on, Karen said, 'Jerome Meller's a nice boy.'

'Who said he isn't?'

'You. He told me you didn't like him. Because he's fat.'

'Oh, for crying out loud! Not another sensitive plant! I never realised how important my good opinion was. I'm flattered to think how much it matters that I, Glenn Earl, head of the art department and freelance painter, should "think well" of the dear little boys and girls.'

Karen felt she could hit him. 'Teachers matter an awful lot to children! Don't you know that? You've been a teacher long enough.' Her tone was accusing.

'It's such a long time since I went to school,' he responded sarcastically. 'Tell me,' he flicked a look in the driving mirror and overtook the car in front, 'did I matter to you?'

It was a question Karen could not answer because in seeking for one, she knew that she would have had to indulge in a session of self-analysis, turning up heaven knew how many boulders and finding under them a crawling mass of inadmissible emotions.

'I can't remember,' she said dismissively. 'I suppose,' she persisted, 'you think that because Jerome's fat, his mind is therefore stodgy and dull, which is how you described mine. But,' she pressed on in spite of the sharp gesture of annoyance which Glenn made, 'he's passionately fond of music, which means that deep down he's sensitive and maybe even artistic.' Glenn Earl was silent, so she went on, consciously inciting him, 'Which you, as his art teacher, should have discovered. And encouraged.' She looked at him. 'After all, I write poetry. I've done it for years, yet you never found out.'

'So,' grimly, spinning the wheel to turn a corner, 'what are you trying to prove? That I've no right to be in the teaching profession? That I'm a rotten artist?'

'Well, aren't they supposed to be able to probe below the surface? Aren't they supposed to be able to see inside a person's mind so that they can reveal it in their paintings?' He still had nothing to say. 'The trouble with you is that you're prejudiced. You've got a blind spot.'

'All right, so I've got a hang-up about obesity. I dislike it and all that goes with it.'

'Which is also why you don't like Charles.'

There was a short silence, then, 'There's more than one reason why I don't like Charles.' He negotiated a road junction. 'For God's sake, I'm only human and as such, I'm entitled to my likes and dislikes. I'm no more perfect than you are.'

He drew up outside her house. 'You can leave me here,' she told him distantly. She moved her right arm defiantly to open the door and get away from him, and winced with the effort.

He got out, walked carefully round to the kerb and opened the door. Karen swung round to rest her feet on the pavement, but the painful leg still objected to the weight that she tried to put on it. She took a breath, gritted her teeth—and found herself scooped up into two not very gentle arms.

'I can walk,' she protested. 'Put me down. I told you to leave me.'

He strode along the garden path to the front door. 'Where's your key?' he asked curtly. 'Or do I ring for the people upstairs?'

Reluctantly she found the key and opened the door with difficulty. He carried her into the hall, closing the door with his shoulder.

He looked down at her and a small smile quirked at the corners of his mouth. 'Where shall I put you, in the dustbin?'

Karen gazed up into his face which was far too near for her peace of mind and saw, for the first time ever, the glimmerings of something approaching good humour. 'Isn't that,' he said, 'where they put all the rubbish?'

She refused to rise to his good humour. 'You put me metaphorically among the rubbish years ago. You might as well complete the process and put me there literally. Only, whatever you decide to do, put me down!'

He smiled. 'Give me one good reason why I should.'

'Because I hate you.' She said it calmly, without emotion, thus giving the statement greater effect.

He put her down so suddenly she had to hold on to the banister rail because of the pain that shot through her leg.

He asked coldly, 'Will you manage to get yourself some food?'

'Yes, thank you.' With an effort she kept the tremor from her voice and made the temperature of it as low as his. 'Charles is coming later. If necessary, he'll feed me.'

'You bet your damned life he will. And himself. That's one thing he is good at.' He left the house.

Karen hobbled to the door and called, 'Thanks for the lift.'

In answer he slammed the car door and roared away.

Charles was solicitous when he arrived and heard the story of how Karen had hurt her leg. He cooked her some tea, adding a portion for himself, 'so that she wouldn't have to eat alone,' as he put it.

They talked about the people Charles had helped and they discussed Jerome. Karen asked Charles how they could encourage the boy with his interest in music.

'Has he ever tried to play a musical instrument?'

Karen asked. 'Couldn't the school provide some sort of instruction?'

'You mean in the piano or violin? They could, but what would be the use?' Charles shook his head. 'The boy's father couldn't afford to buy either of them for him to practise on, and in any case, his environment is all wrong. No, the only way we could help is to encourage his interest in the music club. When he comes, I try to talk to him about it, but explaining Beethoven or Brahms in words of one or even two, syllables is no easy matter!'

Karen rested her head against a cushion. The ache in her limbs had lessened, the room was warm and she felt reasonably content. Charles was sitting beside her, his legs crossed, hugging himself with his arms, looking replete after his second evening meal. His capacity for food, Karen reflected, seemed limitless.

She said impulsively, 'You're so good, Charles.'

He laughed. His hand, small for a man's, running to fat at the end of a short, plump arm, moved to cover hers. 'But not good enough for you?'

She lifted her head and turned towards him. 'No! Please don't think that.'

'If I repeated my offer of marriage, would your answer still be the same?'

Her eyes sought the fire, and in the flames she saw a forming face. She was carried back through the years and Glenn Earl was burning in front of her. But instead of dying away as it used to, the face grew larger until it filled the entire fire. He leapt and danced, tantalising, tormenting, threatening...

She bent forward and threw a log on to the flames, blocking out the face and darkening the room.

'Yes,' she whispered, 'the same.' Charles removed his hand. 'I'm sorry,' she said sadly.

'I told you, I'm patient. I'll ask again.'

Before he left, he put his arms round her and pulled her close. He kissed her for the first time on the mouth and she had to fight a feeling of nausea and the desire to run away. She deplored the impulse and in the midst of her self-reproach, she found herself overreacting and kissing him back.

She recalled her reaction to Glenn Earl's kiss. It was nothing like this. In fact, she remembered that at the end of it she had waited for something that did not come. She had waited for more.

In her panic, she caught at Charles's hand and pressed it between her own. Thank you,' she said quickly, 'for coming here and feeding me. You're being as good to me as to all your other lame ducks.'

'Ah,' he answered, 'but there's a difference. In this case, self-interest is involved. From the others I expect nothing in return. From you I hope for one word— "yes".'

'I'm warning you,' Honor said in the staff room, after inviting Karen for the evening, 'Glenn will be there. Does that put you off? He'll be in conference with Monty about his pictures.'

'Well, I—'

'We'll be in one room and they'll be in another.'

'All right, I'll come.'

There were voices droning on in the dining-room for a long time after Karen arrived. Later, when Honor made coffee, she said,

'I'll have to let the two men come in now, dear. Just close your eyes and pretend Glenn's not here.'

Monty came in first, arms outstretched. 'Karrie,' he said, 'little Karrie Durrant. You see, Glenn here's been telling me all about you.'

Glenn lifted his arms and pretended to take cover from her fury.

'I thought,' Karen stormed at him, 'I told you never to talk to anyone about the past, and if you did I'd ‑'

'Never speak to me again. Go on, try it.'

'It's all right, love,' Monty soothed, 'it'll go no farther than my wife and myself. I'll tell her later, but no one else. Now I understand your cat-and-dog relationship with our friend here. But, love,' he put his arm round Karen's shoulders and spoke as if she were a child, 'you shouldn't bear lifelong grudges.'

'This,' Karen said, feeling like the child he was trying to make her, 'goes deeper—much, much deeper— than just a grudge.'

'Don't fight my battles, Monty,' Glenn said in a hard voice. 'I can fight my own.' His eyes glinted as Karen glared at him. 'Especially those with the so called "fair" sex.'

Karen opened her mouth to launch into another tirade against the speaker when Monty broke in, 'That's right, boy, keep 'em under. It's where they belong.' He followed his wife into the kitchen.

The two who were left behind looked at each other like two dogs circling and sizing the other up. Karen caught at her lip, knowing by painful experience that if she snapped and snarled, he would leap on her and tear her to pieces with his sarcasm and mockery.

She asked slowly, 'Did you know I was coming?'

'I did.'

'Then why did you come?'

'Because I knew you were coming,' he replied coolly.

'And therefore you couldn't let slip a chance to annoy me? You've told me that yourself so many times, it must be true.'

'Of course. I make it part of my life's work to annoy you.' He grinned, dropped into an armchair and sprawled in it. 'To be honest, I had to come, to talk business with Monty. Er ‑'

He waited until she looked at him. 'It may surprise you to know that I've taken a personal interest in one Jerome Meller. I've even given him some individual tuition, as a result of which we've established quite a pleasant teacher-student relationship, but little else. He's so painfully eager to please,' her eyes became reminiscent, 'as you used to be. I recall a fat little girl always wanting to show me her drawings. Is it, I wonder, a characteristic of all over-large types? Charles has it, too, in nauseating abundance. However,' he cut off her protest, 'despite my almost heroic efforts, Jerome still hasn't a spark of artistic talent, so your assumption of hidden ability has proved to be a gross misjudgment.'

'But,' she protested, 'it need not necessarily lie in art. It might lie in music, writing…'

'Ballet?' His eyebrows lifted and amusement flickered across his face. 'With his svelte figure, he'd make a good leading male dancer, wouldn't he?'

'Will you stop sneering?' she cried. 'You see, even now you're reverting to your old habits.'

He sat forward. 'Why the hell shouldn't I be allowed to revert sometimes? Why should you be the only one allowed to do just that, with your neurotic wallowings in past humiliations, imagined insults ‑'

'They were not imagined,' she cried, almost hysterical in her anger. 'They were real, they were unbearable, they were diabolical...'

'You two,' said Honor, coming in, 'for. heaven's sake, stop it! Monty, come and part them, darling. They're tearing each other to shreds.'

Monty appeared, grinning. 'I'll put my money on Glenn. Strengthwise, he's got a head start over Karen. Come on, I'll hold your coats.'

'Coffee will calm them down,' said Honor, handing a cup to Karen and one to Glenn. 'Well, Glenn, how's things? Doing good business?'

'Excellent, thanks to Monty.' He patted his pocket. 'He's just given me a couple of large, very useful cheques.'

'But how,' Karen asked, a little calmer now that intermediaries were present to prevent the conversation from becoming too personal again, 'can you be a full-time teacher, not to mention art department head, and paint commercially as well?'

Glenn lifted his shoulders and stirred his coffee. 'I've got plenty of time. No encumbrances like wives to cry "stop" whenever the urge comes upon me.'

'Listen to him!' said Honor.

'And if an art teacher doesn't practise,' Glenn went on, 'he's not a very good art teacher. So I practise—for profit.'

'Glenn's stuff is in constant demand,' Honor said. 'Most of his paintings sell almost as soon as they're exhibited at the gallery. Don't they, Monty?'

Monty nodded. 'The public keep asking for more. Glenn can't supply his work fast enough.'

'Some of his work's so subtle,' Honor remarked, 'it's way above my head. You know,' she smiled broadly at Glenn, 'great splodges of colour like sunsets painted either by a raging madman or an alcoholic in a drunken stupor. But they're heralded by the art critics and connoisseurs as masterpieces.'

'Seen any of his work, Karen?' Monty asked.

Karen shook her head.

'His portraits are magnificent,' Monty went on. 'Shall I show her, Glenn?' He smiled, moving as if to get up.

'No, you don't!' said Glenn and Monty laughed loudly.

'I'd like to ask him to paint mine,' said Honor, 'but it would cost a fortune, so I don't dare ask.'

'I invited her,' Glenn's head indicated Karen, 'to sit for me. She refused. Very rudely, I seem to remember.'

Karen coloured deeply, remembering the accusation she had Sung at him.

'You didn't refuse, Karen!' Honor said astonished.

'You don't know what a compliment he was paying you,' Monty commented, crossing his legs and smiling.

Karen said uncomfortably, 'All right, so I was wrong. I'm sorry,'

'I never ask twice,' Glenn murmured, enjoying her discomfiture.

'All right,' Karen snapped, 'so you never ask twice.'

'Change the subject quickly,' said Honor. 'Glenn, how are the exhibition arrangements going?'

'Very well.' He leaned back, stretched out his long legs and thrust his hands under the belt around his waist. 'The local authority's being very accommodating. They're offering me all the usual facilities and more. I've completed the work on the exhibits.'

'And Monique?' asked Monty. 'Are. her sculptures ready?'

'As far as I know,' Glenn answered, his eyes cool. 'She knows the date, she knows the deadline.' His head lowered to rest against the upholstery. 'My invitations are ready to be sent out. If hers are not, that's her concern.'

'Who's coming, Glenn?' Honor asked.

'The usual people. Local dignitaries, local paper, fellow artists, friends ‑'

'Possible buyers,' said Monty. 'I've seen to that. I've told all my contacts in the art world. A Glenn Earl exhibition of paintings is a draw wherever it's held, whether in London or in the provinces.'

'I suppose there'll be the usual drinks and so on,'

Honor commented. 'I'll make you a new dress for it, Karen.'

'Who said,' Glenn asked, eyes narrowed into slits, 'she's coming?'

Honor turned red. 'Don't be silly, Glenn. You must ask her.'

His eyebrows lifted. 'I fail to see why.'

'Don't worry,' Karen muttered, tears perilously near, 'I don't want to go. I wouldn't go even if I was asked.'

'Now look here,' said Monty, 'this ridiculous quarrel between you two has gone far enough. Glenn, she's quite upset.'

'The quarrel,' said Glenn, contemplating in a totally detached way the tears which had filled Karen's eyes, despite her attempts to hold them back, 'is all on her side, not mine.'

'That's not true!' Karen blurted out.

Glenn stood up abruptly. 'I'm off.'

'Give Karen a lift, Glenn, there's a dear.'

'No, thanks, Honor,' Karen said thickly, swallowing the irritating lump in her throat.

'It would save Monty getting the car out,' Honor coaxed.

'Come on, Karen,' said Glenn, addressing her as if she were a pest of a child.

After taking their leave of their hosts, they left the house and crunched silently down the drive to the road. Karen got into Glenn's car simply because she had no choice but to do so. Honor and Monty were watching from the door.

Karen waved and Glenn drove away. The exhibition,' Glenn addressed the passing traffic, 'is at the end of. February, in three weeks' time. Will you come to it?' The tone was long-suffering.

'I told you, no. Thank you.'

He sighed. 'I'll send you an invitation.'

'I'll tear it up.'

The car jerked as he jammed his foot on the brake. 'For God's sake, stop bitching!'

Karen was thrown forward and backward, and only the safety belt prevented her from hitting the windscreen. 'I'm not'—to her astonishment and dismay the words caught in her throat—'b-bitching,' she sobbed.

'Oh, God, now she's crying.' He lifted his hand in a despairing gesture. She went on sobbing. 'Why are you crying?' The words were spoken tonelessly.

'I d-don't know.' Then she turned on him. 'Yes, I do. It's you. I thought as an artist you'd have understanding, a feeling for others.'

His fingers drummed rhythmically on the steering wheel. After a few moments, he spoke. 'I am an artist, I admit, but I'm also a human being. My emotions towards other human beings were blunted years ago. Now I keep a strict check on them. My artistic imagination is another matter entirely. I indulge it, I let it roam free, I set no limits on its wanderings. It comes homing to my brain and I paint the visions it has seen. You see the difference? I even indulge myself sometimes. I let my imagination conceive the ideal woman. But when I sit down to paint her, there's nothing to paint. She doesn't exist.'

He was silent while her sobs grew less. Then, 'Have you finished?'

She blew her nose. 'Where are we?'

'Outside your home.'

She started to get out. 'Thanks for bringing me.'

His hand came out, holding her back. 'I shall be sending you an invitation to my art show.' He paused. 'I should like you to come.' Karen did not respond. 'Will you visit my studio some time? It may interest you.'

'What are you doing,' she sneered, 'taking me in hand like you did Jerome Meller? Trying to counteract the misery you caused me in the past and salving your conscience by testing whether or not I really do possess any latent artistic appreciation, despite my dullness and stupidity, despite the fact that my brain's pure stodge, as you called it?'

'You write poetry; No one who writes, poetry can have a brain that could be written off as "pure stodge".'

'Oh, so you've changed your mind about me? Thanks for those kind words. When I die, they can be my epitaph. Goodnight.'

A few days later, Karen was sitting in the staff room with Charles when Glenn Earl confronted her.

'I have a free evening,' he said. 'If you're not otherwise engaged, would you like to come to my place and have a look round?' His voice and face were expressionless. 'You may remember I mentioned it the other day.'

Karen looked at Charles who, at that moment, was contemplating the rising mound of his stomach as if it were a tumulus of great archaeological importance. 'Well, I—'

'Do go,' said Honor, who was sitting next to Karen. 'You'll love it.'

'Charles,' Karen said uncertainly, 'do you mind if I ‑?'

'Me, my dear? Go by all means. I have no claim on you—yet.' He made the pause seem of great significance. His legs were crossed and he appeared to find the toe of his shoe of immense interest, looking at it from all angles.

'Eightish,' Glenn said. He took a used envelope from his pocket. 'The address. Can you find your own way or do you want me to pick you up?'

'No, thank you,' Karen responded tonelessly. 'I'd prefer to come on my own.'

Glenn hunched a careless shoulder and walked away.

It was raining when Karen came upon the house. It was large, probably early Victorian. She could not see the state of the front garden in the darkness, but she guessed it was probably neglected.

She lifted the knocker and lowered it and there was a curious echo inside as though the house was empty of contents, human beings and the warmth and emotions with which human beings, when happy, communicate.

A woman opened the door and it was the atmosphere which Karen noticed first. No warmth here, was her first half-conscious thought, no love in this house. The woman was black haired, full-breasted, a little on the plump side. 'I'm Monique,' she said. 'Remember me? We met on Christmas Day.'

Karen, remembering only too well, nodded and stepped into the hall.

'You're Miss Durrant. I knew you were coming. Glenn warned me before we—settled down.' She smiled knowingly. 'He told me not to get too comfortable.'

Her eyes were sharp, her face both intelligent and beautiful, but there was an insolence about her manner which, although without doubt attractive to a man, repelled a woman.

She looked Karen up and down disdainfully, and Karen became conscious of the well-worn look of her short jacket and jeans. She was no match for Monique in her scarlet, low-cut top and hip-revealing black skirt. But no matter what this woman wore, Karen decided, it would enhance her attractions.

On the way upstairs, Monique said, 'I'll show you the house.' As if, Karen thought, it was still hers to show. 'Here,' she crossed the hall with its strip of deep red carpeting over woodblock flooring, 'is the room we call the gallery.' She flicked a switch and all around were paintings. In the swift glance Karen was allowed, she could discern that some of the pictures must have great value.

'Glenn's a connoisseur as well as a painter.' Monique's attitude was deliberately possessive, giving the visitor no doubt as to her continued share in the building, its contents—and its owner.

'Over here,' Monique crossed to the other side, 'is our display room.' She gestured towards stands and glass-fronted cabinets. 'Glenn's work.' Karen saw on the walls a dazzle of colour caught and held, almost unwillingly, within the bounds of the picture frames. 'Over here, my work.' Monique indicated stands on which carved figures were displayed.

'Upstairs now.' Karen followed as Monique gestured. 'The living area.' They passed through this quickly, and Karen had a moment's sight of armchairs, cabinets, a dining-room and, along a passage, the fitments of a kitchen.

But all this they left behind as Monique climbed another staircase. 'The studio is at the top of the house. Glenn told me to take you there. Go on, go in.'

Monique stood with her back to the edge of the door, watching Karen through calculating eyes and a smile that was half insolent, half goading. 'You'll find him a bit—tired. I guess you'll know why.' She watched with a kind of pleasure the look of repulsion that Karen could not disguise. Monique considered her victim. 'He told me he hadn't got anywhere with you yet. You're a bit lifeless, aren't you? He usually likes 'em violent and flamboyant. Go on,' she lifted her hand, 'have a look round. Look at the pretty pictures.'

Here the true nature of the artist had come into its own. The floorboards were bare, with here and there a dried-out pool of paint. The windows had shutters but no curtains. There was an empty fireplace and there were easels, some holding paintings. Framed pictures were stacked in a corner. On three of the easels were pictures draped with a cloth. They were obviously not intended to be seen by casual visitors.

The mantelpiece was cluttered with brushes, pots and paints. In the centre of the room stood a Victorian chaise-longue, probably where life models posed. Despite the general air of neglect, the grandeur of the past lived on in the decorated ceiling, in the faded wallpaper which, despite its age, revealed quality and taste.

'See that picture?' Monique asked. 'Recognise him? I painted that when we were first married.' She smiled goadingly. 'Not that the divorce has made much difference to our relationship.' She yawned and stretched elaborately, as though completely relaxed.

Glenn came in, tucking his shirt into his trousers. He had not yet fastened the buttons and the broad hardness of his chest aroused in Karen a mixture of feelings she could not understand. The dark hair his open shirt revealed, the tough, uncompromising maleness of the man hit her like a brick wall in total darkness. She was stunned by her response to the attractions he undoubtedly possessed. But, something inside her cried desperately, I hate him, I am not attracted!'

'Hi, darling,' said Monique. 'Got your energy back yet? I warned her you wouldn't have much life in you, not after we ‑'

'Get out!' Glenn rasped. 'Take your things and get out.'

'All right.' She sidled up to him and stroked his cheek. 'But I'll be back.'

She left them and they stood like statues until they heard her leave the house. Karen stared at the lights beaming out from the uncovered windows of the houses all around. Glenn stared at the floor, listening.

When the door banged, Karen said, her lips stiff, her cheeks cold, 'So you've been discussing me with her? Probably while you made love.'

'You're wrong. I haven't made love to that little slut for years.'

'I don't believe you. She told me.' She swung round. 'Is that why you asked me here? Is that where you thought you'd get me? Into bed? Then you could laugh at me afterwards and mock and humiliate me for my ignorance.'

'You're talking the most unmitigated rubbish.' He went out, saying he would make some coffee.

Karen stared at the portrait Monique had painted of him. It was so accurate a record of his features she felt it was alive. If I stretched out my hand, she thought, I would feel his flesh ... There was all the arrogance and derision in his eyes that she hated, the prominent cheekbones, the sarcastic half-smile on the sensual lips, the goading mockery that had grown with her through the years and twisted and warped her memory of him like a tree stunted by disease.

Her eyes were riveted by those painted eyes. They baited her and taunted her and incited her to retaliate if she dared. Mesmerised, her hand lifted and moved towards them. Once and for all she would tear that face from her brain. Her nails made contact with the oil-hardened surface, scored across the features, slipped' and bumped across the painted canvas, to slide, impotent and ineffective, off the corner of the picture.

She gave an involuntary cry of frustration and as she lifted her hand to try again, her wrist was caught and gripped by brutal fingers. 'What the hell do you think you're doing?'

'Killing you,' she shrieked, swinging round, 'ripping you out of me once and for all. Let me go,' she tried to get away, 'let me do it!'

They struggled and he impelled her backwards towards the chaise-longue. He pushed her down and fell on her and they lay together, she gasping for breath, he breathing heavily and slowly.

'Are all women the same?' he grated, his eyes blazing with anger. 'Are they all destructive, vicious little bitches? It's what my ex-wife threatened to do the day after Christmas, if I'd gone to your place. She said she'd tear every single canvas in the studio to shreds. So I couldn't leave the place, so I couldn't go to you. She was jealous, she said, called you my woman. The irony...' He stared into the eyes beneath him, saw the burning hatred there, the irrational loathing that was eating into her like an ineradicable disease.

He lifted himself off her, went across to the windowsill and picked up a pair of scissors. As Karen sat up; rigid and hostile, he held them out to her.

'Go on,, purge yourself, destroy me, express your hatred of me. Only this time, use a weapon and make sure it works.'

Karen took the scissors, stared at them, then at him. 'Go on,' he goaded.

She stood up, looked at the painting and went towards it like someone sleep-walking. The scissors were lifted, poised—dropped. Then, in a spasm of violent uncontrollable anger, she plunged the points into the canvas and ripped across it diagonally.

When she saw the results of her action, and her brain started to spell out to her just what she had done, she thought she could see the blood spurting out of the cheek, running down, down to form a pool on the floor...

She turned, appalled. 'I'm sorry,' she whispered.

'Well,' he was as pale now as she was, as pale as if he really had bled, 'have you got me out of your system?'

Out of her system? Dear heaven, she thought, I've got you so much into my system you're part of the blood running through my body.

She knew now that it was not an accident that it had been his insults which had hurt her most in adolescence. There had been a reason why she had picked on him; as an example out of all the others and carried the hate in her heart all through the years. And the reason was that even in her teens he had entered into her veins, becoming a vital part of her. Oh God, Karen thought, I don't hate the man, I love him!

With exaggerated care because of the trembling of her hand, she put the scissors on the floor. She went to the door, dazed, like someone who had felt the shock waves of an explosion. 'I'm sorry,' she said again.

'I'll take you home.'

She shook her head and went down the stairs, letting herself out of the house. As she walked, the fresh air did little to clear her brain, but by the time she arrived home, she had made up her mind.

She picked up the phone, dialled and waited. 'Charles?' she asked. 'Do you still want to marry me?'

CHAPTER FIVE

At lunchtime next day, Charles took Karen to buy the ring. Later, in the staff room, the teachers gathered round and admired it. The solitaire diamond was large and dazzling in its purity.

'Now I know,' Mr Radcliffe staid, 'that when a man says to a little girl who asks him, "Who are you going to marry?" and he answers, "I'm waiting for you to grow up," he means it!'

There was laughter and when the door opened, the circle parted to let the newcomer in.

'Glenn,' said Honor, 'congratulate them. They're engaged.'

Karen forced herself to meet Glenn's eyes, which were dark, scathing and icy cold. She felt ridiculously as though she wanted to apologise all over again—but for what?

His expression, after a few seconds of disbelief, became so hostile, Karen could see within it the animosity she no longer felt. The hatred, like a virus, had worked its way out of her system and into his. If, she thought painfully, I could have told him, he would have laughed at the irony of it. He seemed to appreciate irony, she thought forlornly.

Now, through her possession of this ring, through her new relationship with Charles, there could never again exist between herself and Glenn Earl even the fragile link there had been before. No more moments of truce, no more offers of a kind of friendship, however tenuous and faint. No more outright enmity, and no more outbursts of frenzied violence, because that could lead to ... Her mind blacked out as memories came crowding back.

'Congratulations,' Glenn said stiffly, and went out.

That evening Karen phoned her mother.

'I'm so pleased,' Mrs Durrant said.

Then Charles took the phone and spoke to her, too. 'I have a confession to make, Mrs Durrant.' Karen heard her mother laugh. 'I'm baby-snatching. According to your daughter, I'm only a year younger than you are. Do you object?'

Karen heard a small—but to her, significant—pause. 'She must know her own mind by now,' Mrs Durrant said at last. 'I'm sure she knows what she's doing. I wish you both every happiness.'

Charles sank contentedly into the only comfortable armchair in Karen's living-room. He seemed immoderately pleased by her mother's reaction. Karen, who knew her mother better, had realised that she was far from pleased.

Karen sat on the rug, legs tucked under her, and stared into the fire. The diamond ring pressed into her finger, reminding her that she was an engaged woman. Where was the elation, the anticipation of marital happiness? The flames warmed her face, but there was no feeling in her body at all. Was the emptiness she felt, she wondered, a sense of hopelessness at her own inability to avoid all that lay before her?

'At my age, Karen,' Charles was saying, 'I don't want a long engagement. There's nothing for us to wait for, is there?'

Karen could not bring herself to answer. In her mind she was still confused by events, she could not grasp the reality of what she had done. With time, it would come, she assured herself. Sharing her life with a man like Charles was better than living alone for the rest of her days.

He leaned forward with difficulty and placed his hand gently on Karen's shoulder. She steeled herself not to wince. 'Treat my house as yours, my dear. In fact,' he straightened in the chair as a thought struck him, 'you could move in whenever you liked. We're engaged, are we not? Couples are doing it all the time these days.'

Now she could not stop herself from shrinking. Anticipate marriage? Was that what he meant? But, she told herself uneasily, it was not something you could do cold-bloodedly, with no sense of urgency, no passion to activate you. At least, she thought, that was something she wouldn't have to worry about. At Charles's age, all passion, if he had ever had any, must long ago have been spent!

It was with a profound shock that Karen discovered how wrong her assessment of his physical feelings had been. He set about grooming her for her role as his wife and life partner, much as a racehorse owner, Karen reflected ruefully, trains a thoroughbred to win.

He seemed to relish the lovemaking part of their relationship with the same appreciation as he savoured his food. Her inexperience was, at first, something of an obstacle—or so Charles regarded it. For lack of experience, Karen thought desperately, substitute 'lack of feeling'. But Charles assured her she would grow accustomed to his demands and, as she -gained in experience, so she would gain in self-assurance. But it just did not happen. She could not bring herself to relax in Charles's arms. Instead, she waited longingly for the kisses and caresses to be finished and for normal conversation to be resumed between them.

One evening, Charles told her that he had been invited by the local office of the Marriage Guidance Council to become a member of their panel—an irony, she thought, smoothing her hair after Charles had ruffled it as he had kissed her, that Glenn Earl would have relished.

Karen fought the repulsion such sessions of lovemaking always provoked in her and said, 'But surely it's necessary to be married before one can give such advice?'

'In a sense, yes. But, you see, I've had a wide experience of solving people's problems in other fields, and I suppose they took that into consideration. And,' he covered her hand and smiled, 'I may be fifty and a bachelor, but I'm no innocent, my dear. I have all the normal desires and sometimes ‑' He stopped, perhaps sensing that he might shock her if he went on.

The feeling of repulsion increased. Karen knew what he meant and it angered her that such an apparently sanctimonious man should have indulged himself in such a way.

Trying to be fair, she argued that he had never set himself up as a paragon of virtue. Other people had pinned that label on him, people like Glenn Earl, not himself. Anyway, she reasoned, he was only human, wasn't he?

But however much she tried to rationalise away her feeling of abhorrence, it did not leave her. Instead, it amplified the terrible sense of inadequacy her constant failure to rise to his standards aroused. What must he think of her? How could he still want to marry her?

She stood up, straightening her clothes. Somehow the puritan in her felt affronted, and as always, she longed to cleanse herself of Charles's caresses.

'I'll make the coffee,' she said.

He struggled to his feet, tightening his tie. 'I'll make it, my dear. No offence, but I prefer the taste of mine.'

There was a hurt feeling inside her and she tried to overcome it by saying, 'I'm afraid I can't cook to your high standards, Charles.'

As he went into the kitchen, he said, 'You'll just have to learn, won't you?'

The inadequacy was back, making her go slack. What had she expected—a laughing 'What does that matter as long as you're, my wife?' She should, she admonished herself, have known Charles better than that. '

Karen received an invitation to the preview of the Glenn Earl art show and, to her surprise, so did Charles. But he refused it, saying that there was a meeting of the school music club that evening.

'I can't let them down. Anyway, an art exhibition is not my cup of tea. Music apart, I have no appreciation of the arts. I suppose some would call me a bit of a moron. Your friend Glenn Earl, for instance.'

'My friend? But, Charles, he and I get on about as well as two dogs tearing each other's fur out!'

'All the same, he watches you. Haven't you noticed?'

Karen flushed. 'Watches me? If he does, it's only so that he can make disparaging remarks afterwards. If you're not going to his exhibition, I won't, either.'

But Charles urged her to go. 'No need for you to make yourself as uncultured as I am. After we're married, we might well find a number of our interests differ.'

At school. Honor said, 'I'll lend you something to wear for Glenn's preview. It's a dressy affair and considered quite an event locally.'

'I—don't know whether I'm going yet, Honor,' Karen said evasively.

'Is it Charles who's stopping you?'

'No, he says go, but ‑'

'Then you're going. Come with us. We'll call for you. We'll come early and I'll do your hair. Make yourself look nice, dear. Please.'

Karen laughed at Honor's urgency. 'If it's all that important to you, I will. At least, I'll try. It'll be difficult making myself look nice.'

'Stop underestimating yourself. Glenn.' He was standing at the table, turning the pages of a book on art. He looked up. 'Come over here,' Honor directed. 'What can we do to stop this girl hating herself?'

He stayed where he was. 'Nothing,' he replied tersely. 'Every time she looks in the mirror, she probably sees herself as she used to be. She'll never change. You're wasting your time. She's a hopeless case.'

Karen felt the colour surge over her face. She thought miserably, He really does hate me.

'Don't say that, Glenn,' Honor coaxed. 'Be kind to her. That's what she needs, a lot of kindness to give her back her confidence.'

He glanced at Karen and the indifference in his eyes chilled her. 'Why should I be the one to hand out compliments? She's got a fiancé now. Let him do the honours.'

Karen went over to the table and planted herself in front of him, making him look at her. 'You can stuff your art exhibition,' she choked. 'I wouldn't go to it if I were paid to.'

His eyebrows moved expressively upwards, he gave her a fleeting, humourless smile and went on turning the pages.

Karen went to the art exhibition after all, because Honor insisted. Monty dropped his wife early in the evening at Karen's house, taking Karen by surprise.

'Come on,' said Honor, 'here's the dress you're going to borrow, and I'm going to do your hair. We've got an hour before Monty comes for us.'

Karen gave in gracefully but protested, 'Why all the fuss? What does it matter what I look like?'

'Because I'm sick to death of seeing you moping around and wearing clothes that look as though they've been taken from a secondhand clothing stall in the market. Not to mention a miserable expression that would even make a cow deprived of its calf look happy!'

Honor's dress was long and clinging. It was long-sleeved and a deep blue, with a low neckline. Since their measurements were so similar, the dress fitted Karen to perfection. 'Too perfect,' Karen complained. 'It's what I'd call almost indecent!'

'Oh, show off your figure, dear. Many women would be proud to have such a shape.' When Monty arrived, Honor said, 'Tell her she looks stunning, Monty. Puff up her ego. She needs a bit of reassuring.'

'My word,' Monty's eyes gleamed mischievously. 'That dress looks better on you than it does on my wife.'

Honor nudged her husband. 'The hair, the face...'

'Pretty good,' said Monty, 'but,' his eyes dropped from Karen's hair and face, 'there are better things to look at.'

'Spare a glance for me, darling,' Honor said.

'I can look at you any time, love.'

Karen ran into the hall, grabbed her coat and held it in front of her.

'She's shy!' Monty laughed. 'And her an engaged woman. Look at her blushing!'

'Enough's enough,' said Honor decisively. 'Time to go.'

As they drove through the streets, Karen sat quietly in the back of the car, listening to Honor and hex husband talking and joking. She was glad that she did not have to join in the conversation. Her feelings were so mixed she could make no sense out of them.

She was on her way to see the work of the man who, through all her years of hating him—or so she had thought—had never left her mind. Had she returned to work at the school where she had suffered such misery, and where she knew he still worked, simply to gain retribution for all the humiliation and pain he had heaped upon her so many years ago? If so, it was an act of misjudgment on her part so. great that its effects would probably remain with her all her life.

The irony struck her. 'Irony' again—she was even beginning to think like Glenn Earl now. She had gone for revenge, to exorcise his ghost from her mind, only to discover that that revenge had turned sour and brought her so near to disaster emotionally that she now knew she would remain haunted by him-—but in a very different way—for ever.

The exhibition was held in the town in an art gallery which was owned and maintained by the local authority. In the cloakroom where they left their coats, Karen pleaded, 'Don't leave me, Honor.' But Honor had already found a friend and was chatting to her.

'Come on, Karen,' she called over her shoulder as they made their way up the stairs to the exhibition hall.

At the top of the stairs they found Monty waiting. Honor joined him. 'Where's Glenn?' she asked. 'Ah, there he is—the man of the evening. Glenn,' she called, 'come and meet the woman of the evening. Karen, show yourself.'

Glenn, dressed in executive style and almost a stranger in his dark, well-cut suit, came towards them. Karen, loving him, had thought she knew all there was to know about him. But here was a side of him that twisted her heart and left it limp and wrung dry of life.

He had dressed with meticulous care. His jaw, which usually held a faint, dark stubble as though he had shaved with a careless hand, was clean-shaven and stubbornly square. His mouth had not lost its hard cynicism, but his eyes held an unaccustomed authority. He was, it told her, on home ground. All around him were works executed by his own hand and drawn from the depths of his mysterious mind, depths which she was not aware he possessed, which challenged, which frightened her because, knowing now the true worth of him, they intensified her love for him.

'Go on, Glenn,' Honor urged. 'Stop staring at her like that and tell her how good she looks. Give her some-confidence.'

Glenn's eyes assumed the same expression as Monty's had done—a reaction that seemed entirely, mechanically masculine. But Glenn's eyes were narrow and unreadable, whereas Monty's had been wide and smiling.

Glenn's eyes dropped from her face as Monty's had done, but this time she possessed no means of covering herself and escaping from the indolent, essentially male examination. Monty had made her blush. Glenn Earl made her burn. He was, she thought bitterly more experienced in reducing her to size, he'd had so much practice.

'Go on, Glenn,' Honor persisted, 'tell her!'

'No, thanks,' Karen said coldly. 'I already know what he thinks of me. There's no need for him to make his disapproval public.'

Glenn shrugged and gestured as if to say, 'What's the use? She's beyond hope.'

A girl hovered, holding a tray. Karen recognised her as being an older student from the school. She looked anything but a schoolgirl at that moment. Glenn smiled at her and spoke a few words and she glowed with pleasure.

Jealousy, like napalm, licked and seared its way through Karen's body. She had never experienced such pain before and it left her shaking. Glenn handed out the drinks, leaving Karen until the last. She lifted dry, burnt-out eyes to his, to find him smiling at her, but with what a difference! His lips were, as usual, twisted. After all, Karen thought, I'm no young, sweet teenager.

'I haven't added arsenic,' he said, 'although you probably think I have.'

. Honor laughed and moved away, taking Monty with her. Karen hesitated, wondering what to do. She looked up uncertainly at Glenn, but he had already turned and was talking to someone else, a man with an American accent who was shaking his hand and congratulating him on his work in the exhibition.

Karen picked up a catalogue which gave the titles and numbers of the exhibits and wandered round the room. People were coming in all the time and Glenn was greeting them, more affable than she had ever seen him. It was oddly out of character—the character she knew—and it troubled her, showing her a side of him—good-humoured, sociable—which she had never encountered. But of course, she reflected bitterly, turning the pages of the catalogue, he would only show his worst side to her. He always had.

The exhibition room occupied a large area, turning a corner into an adjoining gallery, It was a shared exhibition of painting and sculpture, the catalogue said, consisting of works by Glenn and Monique Earl. Their odd relationship was not mentioned. To the ignorant, they might even have been brother and sister. Or husband and wife.

Near the wall on a pedestal was a sculptured head. Subject, the caption announced, Glenn Earl. Sculptor, Monique Earl. There could be no doubt about it, Karen had to admit, Monique had ability. The painting of Glenn, the one she had destroyed, had had colour and life. This sculpture, too, was animated and skilful, with the same sardonic expression, the cynicism around the lips, the brows expressive, the face sensitive, the eyes ‑

'You think it's like me?'

Karen started violently. The voice should have come from the inanimate mouth in front of her, not from the man beside her. 'Yes, I do. Except—there's something wrong with the eyes.' She looked up at him. Those are dull and dead, whereas in reality they're ‑' She searched the grey ones above her, like someone delving into an old trunk, looking for who knows what treasure? They were what—quick, keen, discerning? Caustic, bitter, disillusioned? All of those things and more.

He laughed at her puzzled frown and put his hand on her shoulder, and her whole body responded instantly, pulsingly to his touch. On the surface he was at his most sociable best. His words, could they have been heard by those around them, would have belied the friendliness implicit in his gesture.

'Now,' he said, 'if I were to give you a hammer, would you murder that head of me, as you did that painting of me? Would you shatter it to bits and kick the pieces into a corner?'

'I told you, Glenn,' Karen responded, her heart thudding at the remembered scene, 'I'm sorry—deeply sorry—for ruining the painting.'

'I don't believe you. I think it was the most enjoyable, consummate act you've ever carried out in the whole of your life.' His hand on the soft flesh of her shoulder tightened. 'Whether or not I've forgiven you, I know my ex-wife hasn't. You mutilated one of her paintings. Look at her watching us now.'

Monique stood at the far end of the room. Her expression was vindictive and it was directed at Karen, not her companion. Anger, Karen saw with a sinking of her heart, emphasised the woman's beauty, drawing attention to her flashing eyes and tense, magnificent build.

'She's jealous,' Glenn said. 'She thinks we're having an affair. She thinks you slashed that painting in a deliberate attempt to arouse me to great passion. You look surprised. You don't know how the other half lives. It's the sort of thing she could have done, has done, in fact, before now. Basically, she's violent, and she thinks everyone else is, too.'

'But,' Karen moved away from him, reluctantly breaking the physical contact between them, 'jealous? Why? I was told you divorced her.'

'I did. But she swears she still loves me. She always was a liar.'

'But,' Karen was aghast at his callousness, 'it might be true.'

'Like hell!'

Honor and Monty joined them. 'It's better than ever, Glenn,' Honor said. 'Your work improves every time I see it.' Glenn, with a mocking bow, thanked her. 'But unfortunately,' with a smile, 'my understanding of it doesn't increase. The portraits, yes, but the abstracts——' She shook her head.

Glenn laughed. 'The meaning is there, Honor, if you feel around them with your mind. In art, emotions and feelings are expressed symbolically. Since the artist doesn't use words or sounds, he has to use shapes and colours to communicate what he's trying to say.'

'All I can say,' Honor laughed, 'is that I need an interpreter, because to me a lot of it is just in a foreign language.'

'Come to the evening classes in art that I give at the local technical college.'

'Yes, you go, love,' said Monty, 'then you'll know more than I do. I sell his stuff, but it doesn't mean I understand it any more than you!'

They laughed and Karen asked, 'Do you ever exhibit in London?'

'Frequently,' Glenn told her, 'but local exhibitions are just as satisfying. This is angled for local consumption. I've chosen as subjects things people can recognise as part of their everyday lives. But I've added something deeper.' He pointed. 'For instance, "road sweeper", but he's sweeping up polluted air, not rubbish. "Dustman"—carrying away chemicals which we aren't even aware of using and assimilating into our systems. "Park" from the air, an oasis in a suburban concrete desert.'

'This,' said Honor, 'even I can understand. It's a wife in bed with a football stadium instead of a husband. Presumably he's a football addict! Here's another, sharing a meal with fishing tackle instead of a man. I suppose he's mad on fishing.'

'They're just to add a lighter touch,' Glenn explained, amidst laughter.

All the time people were passing and Glenn was lifting a hand acknowledging them. Some looked at Karen with more than passing interest. Embarrassed, she studied the catalogue. 'These sound intriguing,' she said. 'Numbers one, two and three.'

Honor glanced at her, frowned at Glenn, then at her husband. 'You haven't seen them, Karen?' she asked with an odd look. 'Haven't you shown her, Glenn?'

'Not yet. I suppose,' he eyed Karen closely, 'the time has come. This way, Karen.' He took her hand and turned the corner into the main exhibition room. Karen followed at his bidding, then stopped, stunned into stillness. He dropped her hand.

There were three paintings isolated from the others and occupying the end wall. One, entitled, "The child who died before birth" was of a fully developed human foetus in a womb with its hands flat against a transparent "wall", staring out at the world with longing in its eyes.

The second painting was called "The child who died and lived." It was a painting of Karen as a young adolescent, obese, ungainly and wretched. The third was called, "The child reborn." It was a portrait of herself as a woman.

There was a haunting melancholy in the face, reproach in the eyes and a touch of stoicism in the set of the lips. But overall there was a wistful beauty which the painter himself had introduced because, in reality, it simply did not exist.

Karen, choked with emotion, could speak only one word. She turned large, dazed eyes up to Glenn's. 'Why?'

He countered her shock with raised eyebrows and a half-smile which challenged. 'You were haunting me. I had to get you out of my system. I told you once that I wanted to paint the hatred out of you, the guilt out of me. So I did.'

'And now you're purged, cleansed of me?'

'Absolutely.'

Karen turned away from the cynical smile and Glenn left her side. She thought, her legs weak, I've got to get out, I've got to get away, away from his hatred, his contempt...

The official opening of the exhibition was announced and Karen, with immense difficulty, contained her agitation and contrived to look as interested as everyone around her. The ceremony was performed by a well-known art critic whose name was Walter Cotter. He spoke of Glenn's excellence as an artist, of his fine feeling for good colour and tonal relationships, of his disciplined skill in using both oil and watercolour.

Then he praised Monique Earl, mentioning the intellectual excitement of handling her work and the originality of her approach.

Two clever artists, Karen thought, no wonder they couldn't live together. Their temperaments must have clashed, their comments about each other's work must have grated.

The highlight of. the evening, Walter Cotter was saying, was undoubtedly the set of three paintings behind him, the "Child" series.

'They are an inspired, work,' he said, 'and, I understand, taken from life, from Glenn Earl's own experience. In fact,' he looked around, 'I believe we have among us the subject of one of those paintings. Miss Durrant, Miss Karen Durrant?'

Karen shrank away and in doing so, attracted the man's attention. He turned to look at the third in the series of paintings and then at Karen. 'Miss Durrant?' He beckoned. 'Please allow yourself to be presented to our guests.'

Glenn stood, hands in pockets, staring at the floor. He gave her no help, but she could not refuse the request. As she reached the table and the audience started clapping, Monique's expression turned malevolent. She muttered something to Glenn, who moved away from her and went to Karen's side.

'Glenn has told us,' Walter Cotter went on, 'the identity of the lady in the portrait, but he refuses to identify the other two "Child" subjects. He says the source will never be revealed, that the two "children" were part of him and it was only by committing them to canvas that he could get them out of his system. He said he now feels free, as though a weight had been removed from his mind.'

Two of the audience moved—Monique, clenching her fists; and Karen, with an involuntary gesture of despair. Glenn's hand came down and caught at Karen's clenched fingers, stilling the movement, forcing the fingers open and entwining his with hers. Because of the circumstances she had to submit to the action, but she fought in secret the desire to sink to the floor and sob out her misery.

'But,' the speaker was saying, 'whether we shall ever know the meaning of them or not, I know that he had given us three near masterpieces.' To applause, he declared the exhibition open.

Glenn released Karen's hand and bowed low with a challenging glint in his eyes. Then with his guests, he moved round the room again. It was as though he had forgotten her existence. The talking rose and swelled; glasses chinked, bottles popped and wine flowed. Honor and Monty joined Karen.

'Now you know,' Honor said, 'why I wanted you to look nice.'

'You knew about the paintings?' Karen asked her.

'Glenn brought them to show us that evening you were with us.'

'The evening,' Monty said, 'when we learnt about Karrie Durrant.'

Karen put a finger to her lips. 'Please, Monty ‑'

'Not a word. I promised, didn't I?'

'Come on, Monty,' Honor said, and they circulated again.

A man approached Karen, hand outstretched. 'Whitaker,' he said, 'Stratton Whitaker.' He was the American Karen had seen talking to Glenn. 'I'm sure happy to meet you. Miss Durrant. I've been trying to persuade Glenn here to sell me his . "Child" pictures Haven't I, Glenn?' Glenn, who had joined them, nodded. 'But,' Mr Whitaker went on, 'he won't budge, Miss Durrant, he won't budge. No, he says, and that's final. Those three little letters, N.F.S. mean what they say, not for sale.'

'But Glenn,' Karen said, 'if Mr Whitaker wants the one of me, I don't mind.'

'It's hardly yours to dispose of.' He turned from her coldly. 'Sorry, Stratton, if I were selling them, I'd be honoured for you to have them. But ‑'

'I know, I know, they're not for sale,' Stratton Whitaker laughed with resignation. 'Well, no one can say I didn't try.' He looked at Karen's engagement ring. 'Are you two— ?'

'No,' said Glenn. The emphasis in the voice left the listener in no doubt as to the speaker's state of mind where that subject was concerned. Glenn motioned his guest away.

Stratton Whitaker shook Karen's hand again and went off with the man of the evening.

Later, Glenn strolled over to Karen and asked, 'Got a lift home?'

'Don't worry about me,' she answered coolly. 'I expect Monty will ‑'

'I'll take you. Wait for me. I won't be long.'

'Darling,' said Monique, putting her hand on Glenn's shoulder, 'give me a lift back to the studio.'

'I'm taking Karen home.' He walked away.

Monique reacted violently. 'He won't marry you. I've cured him of marriage for life. He says so.'

Karen endeavoured to stay calm. 'Marriage doesn't enter into our acquaintance, Mrs Earl,' she said. 'Contrary to your belief, there's no relationship of any kind between us ‑'

'You don't have to pretend with me,' she said between her teeth. 'I know my ex-husband too well to believe he can play the saint with any woman. He's just not made that way.' She gave Karen a venomous look and walked off as someone called her name.

Later, in Glenn's car, Karen said, 'You could have taken Monique home.'

'I'm not in business to provide my ex-wife with transport—or anything else. She's lucky I still let her share half the studio.'

His curt tones silenced Karen for a while, then she ventured, 'It was a successful evening, wasn't it?'

'Financially, yes.'

'I—I think you're a wonderful painter, Glenn.'

'Thanks.'

Soon he drew up outside Karen's house. She began to thank him, but he seemed to be preparing to follow her.

She said, hoping to deter him, 'Thanks again for the lift ‑' But he was out of the car and locking it. Dismayed, she asked, 'Are you coming in?'

'Why shouldn't I? Expecting Charles?'

'No, although he might phone.'

'Well,' with a tight smile, 'as long as I don't answer the phone when he rings, it won't matter, will it? I've no intention of raping you. You're another man's property.'

Karen let him into the house. 'Do you have to be so crude?'

He followed her into the living-room. 'Crudity's my second name. I'm an artist, aren't I, and it therefore goes without saying that in the eyes of the world I'm devoid of the finer graces, unpolished and unrefined.'

He wandered round, hands in his pockets. He was so tall he dominated the room. His eyes were everywhere, not only looking but seeing—seeing the worn, furniture, the bare patches on the carpet, the faded curtains. But, oddly, because it was Glenn Earl, Karen did not feel embarrassed or ashamed. Whenever Charles went there, she felt the need to apologise.

Glenn picked one or two books off the shelves. 'It's obvious you're too intelligent to be wasted on a man like Charles Vivian. Ever seen a book in his house?'

'On his own subject—languages.'

'Ancient Greek, Latin? What a ridiculous waste teaching kids those subjects, these days.'

'He teaches French as well,' Karen reminded him defensively. 'In fact, he's a linguist.'

'Big deal for him. And for you. Where are you going for your honeymoon? A cruise round the world? Somewhere Where he can show off his command of languages?'

'Glenn?' he looked up briefly. 'How did you manage to paint me? I didn't sit for you.'

He pushed the books back into place. 'But you did. In the staff room. I sketched you a number of times. Didn't you see me doing it?'

'I usually did my best to avoid looking at you.'

An eyebrow lifted. 'In the past tense? Do you intend to spend every coffee break from now on looking at me?'

She let his smiling sarcasm pass. 'Charles said you watched me a lot.'

'So he noticed? It's a wonder he can see anything over that mountain of a stomach.' He smiled caustically, challenging her to rush to her fiancé's defence, but she changed the subject.

'Glenn?' she paused. Should she ask? Would she be accused by him of probing into what was unquestionably not her business? She plunged on, 'What connection did you have with the baby that died before birth?'

He winced, as though the question pained. There was a silence, in which he seemed to be conducting a silent battle. At last he said, 'You don't know?'

'No,' she said softly, hating to see the hurt in his face.

'No, of course you don't. Only Honor and Monty know, and they wouldn't tell.'

'Charles told me you divorced your wife after she had a miscarriage.'

'Yes, he would tell you that. But I can't blame him, he would only have heard the rumours, not the facts. Very few know those. I'll trust you and let you be one of them, provided you keep them to yourself. I particularly don't want Charles Vivian to know.'

Karen was torn by her loyalties—to Charles, whom she was going to marry and to Glenn, whom she loved. 'But, Glenn,' she said, 'he's going to be my—my husband.' Glenn was silent. 'All right,' she whispered, 'I won't tell him.'

'Thanks.' He picked a stray hair off his jacket and held it up. 'Brown. Yours. Ironic, isn't it?' He dropped it, watching it float to the floor.

He strolled to the fireplace where the burnt-out remains of last night's fire stayed undisturbed, and stared down at them. 'In my twenties, I wasn't exactly a saint where women were concerned. Then Monique appeared. We had an affair. I assumed she was taking precautions—in fact, she assured me "it was all right" when I asked. She became pregnant.'

He paused, as if talking about it caused him pain. 'Since I had some principles—that surprises you, doesn't it?—I married her. I was determined that no child I helped to conceive would be born illegitimate. That I would not inflict on any infant.

'What I did not know, because she didn't tell me until I had married her, was that she had become pregnant by other men but had miscarried every baby. She had, it seems, been told by a doctor after the first miscarriage that it was very unlikely that she would ever carry a child full term. Which was what she'd meant by "it was all right".' A long pause, then, 'In due course, she miscarried the baby. It would have been a boy—my son. As soon as she was back to normal, we parted and I started divorce proceedings on the grounds of irretrievable breakdown of marriage. Since then she's gone from one man to another. Now you know the true story.' He gave Karen a quick, cynical look. 'Am I less of a monster now in your eyes?'

'I'm—I'm sorry,' she whispered. It was all she could find to say.

The phone rang. 'Your loved one calling.'

Still shocked by Glenn's revelation, Karen went into the hall to answer the phone. 'Charles? Oh, yes, Jerome?' Her heart began to pound. 'He's what?' Glenn opened the front door. 'Glenn,' she whispered, covering the mouthpiece, 'please wait.'

He shrugged, closed the door and waited.

CHAPTER SIX

'Tell me again what happened, Jerome, but slowly, this time.' Karen listened, holding fast to the banister post. 'And now he's in hospital? Which one? Is he bad? Oh, dear. I'll phone them straight away. Where's his car? At the garage? And you? A neighbour's coming for you? Th-thank you for phoning me, Jerome. You're—you're a good boy.'

Karen's hand was shaking as Glenn took the receiver and replaced it in its cradle. 'Accident?'

Karen stared at him blankly, then came to life. 'Heart attack. The car broke down when he was taking Jerome home from the school music club. There was a garage only a short distance along the road, so they pushed the car between them.'

'Pushed, it? A man with his weight to carry? No wonder his heart complained. Why didn't they get a mechanic to come and help them?'

Karen sank on to the stairs, attempting to get her mind into focus. 'It was obviously too much for Charles, because Jerome says he collapsed as they reached the forecourt of the garage. Someone sent for an ambulance and he was rushed to hospital.'

'How is he now?'

She shook her head vaguely. 'Jerome didn't know. They wouldn't tell him. Too young, I suppose, and not a relative ... I must ring the hospital.' Karen reached out for the phone and saw in a detached kind of way that her hand was still shaking.

There was a short delay while the operator discovered the correct ward to contact, then Karen found herself talking to the Sister in charge, telling her that she was Mr Vivian's fiancée and would they please inform her as to her fiancé's condition?

Afterwards, Karen told Glenn, 'They want me to go and collect his clothes and his belongings...' Her voice trailed away, then she said, louder, 'I can't see him tonight because he's in the intensive care unit—just as a precaution, she said.' She looked at her watch. 'I'll hire a taxi. You go, Glenn. I'm sorry to have messed up your evening. You should be out celebrating the success of your art show.'

'Alone?'

Karen lifted her shoulders.

'Before the phone went, I was about to ask you if you'd go out with me for a: drink.'

She felt hopelessly inadequate, thinking, I can't tear myself in two. Charles needs me. Glenn's tough, he's a loner, he'd never need any woman, except for one purpose. Even though she loved the man, she had to make herself see him as he really was, not as she wanted him to be.

'I'm sorry,' she said helplessly, paused uncertainly, then reached for the telephone.

'Now what are you doing?'

'Calling the local car hire firm.'

Glenn removed the receiver from her hand. 'With me here? Get your coat.'

'But, Glenn,' she looked up at him, 'it's not your problem ‑'

'I said,' quietly, 'get your coat.'

They drove in silence to the hospital. Karen did not stay there long. She told the Sister that she was Charles's fiancée, that he had a brother but she did not know his address.

'Don't worry,' the Sister told her. 'He's doing as well as can be expected in the circumstances. Things could have been worse.'

As Karen walked away from the hospital building, holding Charles's belongings in a large bag, she drooped with fatigue. With it came fear and depression, which, following on the strange sense of elation she had experienced during the evening—Glenn's evening—was all the more shattering. She was fond of Charles, fond enough to do her best to please him. She acknowledged that she did not love him, but without him she would be alone again.

Now he had heart trouble and she was going to marry him. What did it mean? What was she letting herself in for? Twenty-four years between them. She was young, but he was already showing the signs and strains of middle age.

As she passed through the hospital gates and reached the road, she saw with surprise and an enormous sense of relief that Glenn had waited for her. He saw her drooping figure and got out of the car. 'Come on,' he said, 'put those things in the back and get in beside me.'

Beside him, the errant thought sidled into the front of her mind as he accelerated and drove away—if only that was where she could be for ever ... Reaction caught up with her at last and she began to shake. 'I'm sorry,' she said, 'but I c-can't help it.'

'I suppose there's not a drop of alcohol on your pure, virginal premises?' He sent her a quick, sardonic glance. 'No, I thought not. I'll take you to my place and give you a drink.'

'B-but, G-Glenn, it's late.'

'I can't take you home and leave you in this state. I'd have you on my conscience again and that I couldn't stand.'

His cynicism grated, spoiling his thoughtfulness. 'I'm sorry to be such a b-burden, but I d-did tell you to go but you wouldn't, even though...'

'Oh, stop whining, woman!' The words were harsh, but she detected that the tone had softened just a fraction.

Glenn tried the front door of his house and it opened. Karen followed him into the hall and he closed the door. Monique stood at the top of the stairs, a winning smile on her face. 'Glenn? I was waiting for you, darling ‑' Then she saw Karen and at once her eyes became black with rage. 'So you've brought the star of the evening back with you! I should have known, shouldn't I? Little Miss Innocent with those big grey eyes and that "come here—go away" look.'

Glenn climbed the stairs and pushed Monique roughly to one side: As Karen followed behind him, she could detect that Monique had been drinking—_; and judging by her belligerent manner, to excess. She drew level with the woman, trying to hide her fear.

It seemed she had been justified in being frightened because, as she started to move past Monique, the woman reached out, her hands formed into claws as if she were about to score her nails down Karen's face.

Involuntarily Karen cried out and Glenn swung round. He summed up the situation at a glance and as Karen covered her face with her hands, she felt his arms come protectively round her.

'Get out, Monique,' he rasped, 'get out, you vindictive little ‑'

'Glenn,' Monique clung to his back, pressing against him, 'there was a time when you made love to me and called me your—'

'Be silent, woman!' He tried to shake her off, but she held on. He put Karen roughly away from him, reached his hand over his shoulder and gripped Monique's wrist until she shrieked and released him. Then he pushed Karen in front of him into the living-room.

A few minutes later, Monique ran down the stairs and out of the house.

The room, despite its name, did not look "lived-in" The quality of the furniture was good, but plainly unused. Despite the order, there was an air bordering on neglect—on the need for a woman's gentle touch. And there was no gentleness in the woman who came and went in this house.

'I'll get you a drink,' Glenn said.

Karen shivered, shaking her head.

'I'll make coffee, then. Sit down. Try to relax.'

Karen sank into a soft, velvet-covered armchair, enjoying its expensive comfort. She closed her eyes, and a sweet peace crept into her. She was in Glenn's house, he was busy in the kitchen and for a moment—a precious, memorable moment—there was peace in her world, and her heart;

As he entered with a tray, reality intruded. She was in his house, but he was not her man—nor any woman's man. Never again, he had said, and Karen was sure he would keep his vow.

She drank the sweet, strong coffee avidly and Glenn gave her a second cup. 'I'm sorry about Monique,' he said, resting his head against the back of the chair and closing his eyes. It was as if he too had found a surprising peace. 'I didn't think she would still be here.'

Karen drained her cup and asked Glenn where the kitchen was. 'Why do you want to know?' he asked.

'I want to wash this.'

'Oh, no, you don't.' He sat forward, ready to restrain her. 'You're not going in there. You'd wash your own cup and start on the rest. Living alone, I don't keep the place looking like a housewife's paradise. You've had enough for one night. You're not taking on my domestic jobs as well. Come on, I'll take you home.'

In the car, Glenn asked, 'Going to visit your fiancé tomorrow?' There was the faintest smear over the word 'fiancé'.

'Any time, they said.' They arrived at Karen's house and she said, 'Thanks, Glenn, for—for everything.'

His head turned slowly and in the light from the street lamps, he studied her profile which she kept resolutely towards him. If he looked into her eyes now, he would learn, with that delving, artistic mind of his, secrets which, miser-like, she must hoard and protect from discovery for the rest of her life.

But it seemed he would not be put off with half measures. For him, it was all her features or nothing. A hand came up and closed with an irresistible, caressing gentleness around her throat. That hand impelled her face round towards him and the touch of him stirred within her a response so powerful it made her heart vibrate with fear. This man, if he ever chose to do so, could do what he liked with her. Where he was concerned, there were no barriers, no protective walls, only a vast, virgin-land of vulnerability.

To her pleasure and anguish, his head lowered and his cold, hard lips possessed hers, once, twice, three times ... His eyes were hidden by the darkness, but on her upturned, defenceless face the lamplight shone. What, she wondered fearfully, could that probing glance discern? Tired as she was, wearied by events, she could hide nothing from him.

'Fatigued beyond words,' he murmured. 'White-faced, wide-eyed, dazed. Grief?' Still he searched, his eyes touching like a caress on every feature. 'No, no grief. There should be,' he murmured, half to himself, 'so why not, why not?'

She knew, but she could not tell him why. So he saw her tiredness but nothing else? 'Yes, yes, I'm tired,' she said hastily, freeing herself from his hand with a twist of the head.

When Karen visited Charles in hospital next day, he was still in the intensive care unit.

'Under observation,' the nurse explained, 'but we think the worst is over.'

He was pale and lying back on his pillows. To Karen's secret amusement, his first words after their greeting were, 'Next time you come, my dear, will you bring the bananas and oranges on my sideboard? Pity to waste them when I need them here. The food—the little they've allowed me to have—is just a bit monotonous.'

'Charles,' Karen grasped his hand, 'I've been worried about you. I phoned first thing this morning and they told me there was a slight improvement. It was so lukewarm I took it the wrong way...'

'Hospital jargon, my dear, that's all. I'm feeling better already.' He settled against the pillows, resting his linked hands on the minor hillock which rounded gently under the bedclothes. 'I suppose my car's still at the garage?' Karen nodded. 'How did you get here last night? They told me my fiancé came.'

'Glenn brought me.' His frown made her feel uncomfortable and oddly guilty. 'He took me home from the art show and he was there when Jerome phoned.' She felt the need to keep on explaining. 'He was about to go home, but brought me here instead. It was very good of him. Charles,' he looked at her, 'you remember you noticed the way Glenn kept looking at me in the staff room? Well, he was sketching me, and he used the sketches as the basis for a painting of me.'

Charles did not seem pleased.

Like an excited child, she rushed on, 'At the art show there's a beautiful portrait of me. Someone, an American, tried to buy it, but Glenn wouldn't sell.'

'I'll buy it from him.'

'I—I don't think he'll sell, Charles.'

'He will to me. I'll offer him a good price, more than he's asking, whatever that is. As your future husband, I have every right to that portrait.'

Karen said faintly, 'He's not asking anything, Charles. He's—I think he's,' she fabricated, 'going to exhibit it somewhere else, at other art shows.'

'I'll be patient. I'll wait until he's finished with it. No artist these days can afford to turn down a good offer for one of his works.'

Karen thought it best to change the subject. 'All the staff are very sorry to hear about you. They send their good wishes; Jerome, too.'

He seemed pleased at last. 'Talking of Jerome, will you take over the music club, my dear, until I get back to school? I can't let that fade out because there's no other member of staff willing to take an interest.'

She promised to do her best, then looked at her watch. 'Is there anything you want me to bring when I come again?'

The list grew so long, it filled one side of a used envelope. When Karen left him, Charles kissed her on both cheeks, holding her close for a moment. Her eyes moistened with compassion. 'Soon,' he whispered, 'I'll be back to normal and then I can get near you again.'

Her compassion held and overcame her instinct to recoil. With a wave, she left him.

She had had no lunch. Glenn had given her a lift to the hospital, saying that it was on his way to the restaurant he patronised. When Karen saw his car waiting for her against the kerb she was overwhelmed.

He leant across and threw open the door and as she got in, murmuring her gratitude, he pushed a packet of sandwiches into her hand. 'Glenn,' she said, her eyes bright, 'how thoughtful, but it didn't matter. I wasn't hungry ‑'

'Eat them, for heaven's sake, now I've taken the trouble to buy them. They're cold meat, which I hope you like.'

She thanked him again and opened the packet. As they drove back to the school, Karen told him about Charles's interest in the painting. 'He wants to buy it, Glenn.' There was a faint quaver of uncertainty in her voice, but it made no difference to his answer.

'Not selling.'

'I told him that, but he didn't believe me. He said he'd make you a good offer.'

'Let him. N.F.S. means what it says.'

Karen took over the running of the music club. One afternoon, one of the two stereo speakers stopped working. Karen, a little lost and with no technical knowledge, went hopefully into the corridor to look for one of the electronically-minded members of staff. Glenn appeared, turning a corner. He saw her anxiety at once. 'What's the matter?'

When she explained, he said he would have a look at it for her. 'You can't help,' she said, standing in the doorway. 'You're an artist. You don't know anything about—'

His hands clamped on to her shoulders and jerked her out of the way. 'If you've finished insulting my intelligence, I'll see what's wrong.'

He bent over the speaker to inspect it and looked round at her. 'Got a screwdriver?' Karen, feeling a little foolish, shook her head. 'Now who's dreamy and out of this world?' She turned pink at his sarcasm in front of the interested group.

Jerome said, 'I'll get one from the caretaker, sir.' He returned a few minutes later, triumphantly brandishing one.

The equipment was soon back in working order. 'A couple of wires making bad contact,' Glenn said. 'So simple even an ignorant teacher of shorthand could have put it right.'

It was intended, Karen knew, as insult for insult. All the same, it hurt, as indeed his sarcasm always had. But he stayed on at the back of the music room and listened as Beethoven followed Brahms and Mozart.

When the audience had gone, he remained where he was, leaning casually against the wall near the door, hands in pockets, long legs draped one over the other. Karen, having put away the equipment, went towards him. The mere sight of him standing aloof and detached, unaffected by his surroundings, and most of all, she thought bitterly, by her, had her pulses throbbing and her emotions in a turmoil.

Trying to sound casual, she said, 'I didn't think you liked classical music. You've never been to the music club before.'

He did not move from his slightly indolent position. His eyes ranged over her, bringing the colour to her cheeks. In her navy ribbed sweater and dark red skirt, she knew her shape showed to advantage. He, of course, made the most of it, as indeed he always had done. There was a male look in his eyes, not praise, and she had to remind herself again that for him she held no attraction.

He said tersely, 'I've never liked the person who ran it.'

'But now I run it.' A faint smile lifted the corners of her mouth. 'Does that mean you like me?'

There was a short silence, then, 'What exactly are you asking for? A declaration of devotion to a girl who's vowed never to "forgive" me, to hate me until I'm in my grave and beyond?'

'No.' She walked to the door and turned. 'Just a pleasant, kindly word now and then. But, as the "Karrie Durrant" in me knows, asking for that from you is like asking a still life painting to move.'

He called along the corridor, 'I'll give you a lift home,' but she did not even turn round.

It was a blustery, early March evening and as she walked along the school drive, it began to rain. She put up her coat collar and pushed her hands into her pockets. A car came from behind her and as it passed and went on its way, she made out in the gathering darkness the outline of Glenn Earl's head.

Every evening Karen went to the hospital to see Charles. He had been out of the intensive care unit for some time. His moods alternated between cheerful optimism and depression. He grumbled mostly about the food. 'Badly cooked, poorly served. And they never give me enough.'

At his request, she took him fruit and eggs, also cakes which she had made herself. Sometimes, on the way home, she would call at Honor's house. Often Glenn was there, but he rarely spoke. He would take up a book and read it as Karen and Honor talked. Or, seemingly tiring of their trivial conversation, he would join Monty in another room.

There seemed to be a state of cold war between herself and Glenn again, and she told herself she could do nothing about it. So she shrugged her shoulders miserably and waited for it to end. On such evenings, he never offered her a lift home. Instead, either Monty would take her or she would go by bus.

One evening Monty was out and Honor, looking tentatively from Glenn to Karen, said, 'Take Karen home, Glenn? It's raining.'

Glenn put aside his book with a sigh and prepared to get up, but Karen was out of the door and putting on her coat before Honor could stop her.

'Goodnight,' Karen called, and was on her way. Two can play at this game, she thought, fighting the tears.

The day Charles was taken home by ambulance from the hospital, Karen took a day's leave of absence from school. She made Charles's bed and stocked the deep freeze and fridge with food. Mrs Barker from next door had cleaned the place through and opened the windows to air the rooms.

Charles, when he arrived, was dressed in the clothes Karen had taken in the previous evening. Outwardly he looked well. The danger was, he had said the night before, that he would overdo things when he got home because he felt so much better.

He lowered himself into an armchair and reached out for her hand. 'Will you come in every day, Karen, and look after me?'

'I'm your fiancée,' she replied with compassion in her smile, 'if I didn't look after you, who would?'

He pressed the back of her hand to his lips, and she willed herself not to reject the affectionate gesture.

After lunch he sat for a while in the living-room. He looked a little pale and said he was in the process of readjustment to home life. After sharing a pot of tea with Karen, he went to bed. At his request, she stayed until he was asleep, promising to return in the morning on her way to school. She closed the door quietly and went home to start on a pile of homework and when that was finished, to write notes for her classes next day.

It was well after midnight before she went to bed, but the pattern had been set. It was a pattern which was to become a routine and then a ritual. Every morning and every evening—Mrs Barker next door gave him his lunch—Karen went to Charles's house to prepare his breakfast and his evening meal. This she shared with him and washed the dishes afterwards. Then she would go home and start on her school work.

The routine began to take its toll. It was not long before Honor noticed. 'You look so tired, dear,' she said, one day in the staff room. 'Can't Charles get someone else to look after him for a bit and give you a rest?'

Karen, trying to catch up on the work she had been too tired to tackle the night before, pushed the hair from her face and shook her head. 'He won't have anyone else. And I am his fiancée. Honor. I must look after him.'

But Honor was not satisfied. 'Surely,' she persisted, 'he can see how pale you look? You'd think he'd spare a thought for your welfare as well as his own.'

Karen smiled to herself. If Honor knew how pedantic Charles was about the way his house was run, how he complained about the way she cooked his food and how he told her that she would have to take cookery lessons before they were married, she would realise that Charles had very little consideration to spare for anything but his own welfare.

Although he was still not fit enough for work, Charles was up and about. He had contacted his acquaintances to tell them that he was back in circulation. The phone calls asking for advice and guidance began again. Charles seemed pleased. It gave him something to think about, he said, during the long hours he spent alone.

Karen responded defensively, 'I've got my job, Charles. I come whenever I can.'

But it seemed it wasn't enough for Charles. 'Soon,' he said, 'we must get married, then you can devote all your time to getting me better.' He said it with a smile, but Karen knew he was not joking.

She had been dreading the time when Charles would start to make love to her again, but one evening he pulled her down beside him. She did her best to simulate pleasure at his touch, but, she thought, desperately steeling herself to accept his kiss, I would rather work myself until I dropped than have to tolerate this.

One day Jerome came along the corridor. 'Miss Durrant,' he said eagerly, 'Mr Earl's trying to get me to draw. He says everyone can draw if they really try, miss. He took me to his house ‑'

'He what, Jerome?'

Jerome did not regard Karen's astonishment as anything unusual. 'He took me to his house and gave me some paint and a brush, a big brush. He pinned some paper to an easel and said, "Paint." So I painted, anything that came into my head. It's great at his place. Miss Durrant. He doesn't mind if you spill things or drop crumbs on the floor. He started to paint me, miss. He told me to get on with it and take no notice and he painted me. I bet I'll look awful!'

'Oh, I—I don't suppose so, Jerome,' Karen said faintly. 'Are you going there again?'

'He says so, Miss Durrant. He showed me that picture he did of you. I think it's great. I asked,' he looked away shyly, 'I asked if he could do a little one for me, and he thought that was very funny. I said it was only like asking someone for a copy of a photo, but he said he was sorry, he couldn't oblige. He said he couldn't do another one of you like that, even if someone paid him. He said that particular "you" had gone for ever. Since he'd painted that, you'd changed.'

Karen put up her hand to hide the colour in her face. 'I wonder what he meant?'

Jerome shrugged, as if the explanation was beyond him. 'He said you didn't look like that any more. He's a painter, miss,' Jerome added with a wisdom with which Karen had not credited him, 'so he'd see things, wouldn't he?'

What things? What had Glenn noticed? With his artist's probing eye, could he, like a water diviner, 'feel' her feelings? But surely, she thought, I'm not as transparent as that?

One morning in the corridor, Karen found the courage to attract Glenn's attention.. If her hand had not come out, he would have passed her by. But despite the pounding of her heart, she said, 'Jerome tells me you're trying to get him to draw.'

Glenn lounged against the wall, hands in pockets. 'What of it?' His tone plainly told her that it was his business, not hers.

Karen's heart sank. She said miserably, 'Why don't you give me a chance to speak before you leap down my throat?' The tears were hard to hold back, but he looked at her without a flicker of response. 'I—I was going to say,' she continued, 'how—how good it was of you to take such an interest in the boy. Especially as you implied once that you didn't like him.'

'Well?' he said curtly. 'Can't I change my opinion?'

Karen turned away impatiently and started to move on, but he moved quickly and barred her way. 'You look like death.'

'Well?' She used his own words, seeking revenge for his unsympathetic attitude. 'What of it? It's my business entirely how terrible I look.'

He gave her a cool, considering glance. 'Still running the music club?'

'Yes.'

'I'll take it off your shoulders.' Karen stared up at him. 'And,' he warned, his eyes narrow, 'if you dare to say "What do you know about music?", with these hands,' he lifted them, 'I'll ‑' he fitted them round her neck.

She felt the exquisite pleasure of their presence on the soft flesh of her throat. For a few torturing seconds she held his eyes, then tore his hands away. She turned and ran from him.

Although she had not in fact agreed to Glenn's suggestion that he should take over the running of the music club, Karen arrived at the music room after school one afternoon and found him there.

His face was cold, his eyes held a belligerent glint as he watched her approach him. She opened her mouth to protest at his presence, but he cut in, 'You can get out. I'm quite capable of running this thing without your assistance.'

His abrupt, uncompromising tone cut into her, but she knew it would be useless, to protest. She had no alternative but to leave him to it. As she walked away, she acknowledged, deep down, the enormous sense of relief that at least one responsibility had been removed from her weary shoulders.

It was early April now and Charles had improved sufficiently for the doctor to consider his return to work at the start of the summer term.

'But not yet,' Charles told Karen. 'He said I must take reasonable exercise and eat less to get my weight down.' He laughed. 'I'll obey the first instruction. The second—well, a man can't give up everything that makes life worth living, can he?' And he shifted his bulk along the settee to settle his arms round Karen's stiffening body.

One morning, as Karen was making her way towards the staff room for morning break, one of the older boys in the school stopped her in the corridor. She recognised the boy, vaguely, having seen him once talking to Charles. He was a sixteen-year-old youth and his name was Tim Sutter. He was red-haired, and, it clung in uncared-for curls to his head. His pale face was freckled and sullen. Under the politeness with which he grudgingly treated his teachers was an insolence only lightly battened down, threatening to burst out at any moment should the restraints imposed on it by society slip even a fraction.

Tim's manner was veneered with civility, and Karen knew it was only because he was intent on asking a favour of her. 'Are you Mr Vivian's wife, miss? Some of the kids say you are.'

'No, Tim.' Karen managed a smile. 'Why?'

'Well, miss, me and me brother's in trouble at home and the last time it happened, Mr Viv came round and saw our dad.'

'I'm sorry, Tim, but Mr Vivian's been ill and he's only just recovering. I really don't think I can trouble him ‑'

'But, miss,' his brow pleated with pleading, 'it's urgent. I've got to see him. Our dad's thrown us out again and the last time, Mr Viv got my dad to change his mind. Can't you tell him, miss?'

Karen hesitated, her heart a little touched in spite of herself. She knew she would have to tell Charles about the boy, because if she didn't, he would get to know somehow.

She promised to mention the matter and hoped the boy would be satisfied. But Tim Sutter persisted, 'Today, miss. It must be today, because our dad says he won't have us back tonight and we've got nowhere to go.'

'Oh.' Karen sighed and looked at her watch. 'I've got a class now, but at lunchtime, I'll give Mr Vivian a ring. Now, will that do?'

The boy smiled with the smile of one who had won a skirmish. 'Thanks, miss.'

When Karen contacted Charles, he said, 'Bring Tim Sutter here with you after school, Karen. I'll see what I can do for the two of them.'

'But, Charles,' Karen protested, 'you're not fit enough to fight other people's battles. If you go and see the father, he might be difficult, and you'll get excited ‑'

'My dear,' he said, as if addressing a slightly dull young child, 'I have no intention of confronting the father. Last time he gave them one more chance, and they've had that chance. He's a man who sticks to his word. I'll hear what the boy has to say before I make up my mind what to do about him.'

So Karen took Tim Sutter with her to Charles's house. On the bus, she said, 'I didn't know you had a brother, Tim. Is he younger than you?'

'No, three years older, miss. He's nineteen. He does labouring work on a building site. He's got an old van. If Mr Viv can't help us, we'll have to sleep in it tonight.' He added, 'I've got five other brothers and sisters, miss.'

Karen left Tim with Charles in the living-room while she began the ritual of cooking the evening meal.

When she heard the front door slam, she left the kitchen and joined Charles.

'I've offered them a room here,' he told her.

'You've what? But, Charles,' she said, aghast, 'is that wise? You're hardly well enough to cope. Who's going to look after them, feed them ‑?'

He smiled and patted her hand. 'With your help, I'll cope. And they can feed themselves. I'll give them the run of the kitchen. They can keep their food in the fridge.'

'But their washing, their cleaning?'

'There's a launderette in the shopping centre, and they can learn to use the vacuum cleaner.' He put his arm round her shoulders. 'I've had people stay here before now. I'm sure I told you. Can't have two young men roaming the streets, sleeping rough. Heaven knows what they'd get up. to, or what would happen to them.'

Karen asked faintly, moving out of range of Charles's arm, 'Which rooms are they to have?'

'The two small ones,'

'And—and how long are they staying?'

'As long as necessary.' Karen's heart sank. 'Until they can find themselves somewhere else.'

Which, Karen calculated, could take months. In fact, she reflected, if Charles made them too comfortable, it might be difficult to get them to go.

She hazarded, 'I suppose they'll be paying for the accommodation?'

'Paying? Good heavens, no. I've got the rooms, they're standing empty. The boys will have enough to pay out for their food. I know the elder brother's got a job, but he won't be earning much as a builder's labourer,'

Enough, Karen thought, to own and run a van.

'Look out some bedding, will you, my dear, and make up the beds?' He settled in an armchair with a contented sigh.

With a frightening sense of foreboding, Karen did as Charles had asked.

The two boys arrived when Karen was washing the dishes after the evening meal. The van turned into the sideway and there seemed to be something terribly final about the way it stood there, as though it had come to stay.

They trundled their belongings up the stairs, leaving the front door open and letting-in the drizzle and cold wind. The mud on the elder brother's boots left its mark on the stair carpet. His name, it seemed, was Trevor. His hair was a watered-down version of Tim's, and it hung, long and unruly, round his neck.

Under the older boy's smile was a look that, when it rested on Karen, turned into a leer. She decided that she did not like Trevor Sutter at all.

Charles's assumption that the two young men would look after themselves proved right—for about three days. Then, having no doubt noted that Karen visited the house regularly and cooked meals and washed the dishes, Tim and Trevor began to leave their crockery in the sink, instead of on the drainer to drain. It was a subtle move, as if they knew the ways of women.

Karen, unable to stand the sight of the unwashed dishes, washed and dried them, then told herself she was a fool, because now they would continue to leave their dishes for her to handle.

This they did, and later, their crockery was joined by unwashed clothes placed strategically beside the washing machine. Karen did her best to ignore them, but the clothes were joined by more. In desperation, she threw them all into the washing machine, added powder and washed them.

She left the clothes in a pile, still wet, outside their rooms. Next day, they were still there. So she hung them in the garden and after two or three days, the clothes were taken in. The non-paying guests had made their point—and, she had to accept, had won.

When a fortnight of their stay had passed, Charles mentioned that every time he went past the two rooms, that the boys' beds were unmade. 'As a special favour to me, Karen,' he said, kissing her gently and patting her cheek, 'Would you make them? I hate to see such untidiness at all hours of the day. It would only take you a few minutes, wouldn't it? I expect they miss their mother.'

So, Karen thought wearily, Charles considered that she should act the substitute parent? He hadn't seen the look in the eyes of the elder of his two cherished lame ducks whenever she came into his line of vision. With a feeling of exasperation, Karen did as Charles had requested.

Before the arrival on the scene of the Sutter brothers, it had been her appearance that had begun to suffer. Hadn't Glenn told her how terrible she looked? Now it was her health. Every morning, she felt more and more reluctant to drag herself out of bed and face the day. As Charles's health returned to normal, the work Karen did at his house increased rather than lessened.

One evening he asked her to 'add a little extra to the evening meal for the two boys upstairs.' It would, he said, save them the bother of cooking it themselves, and besides, he added, they did leave the kitchen in rather a mess.

Because it was the lesser of the two evils—Charles was right, Karen told herself, about the mess—and because it was better than having company in the kitchen while she was there, Karen bought more food, cooked it, served it and carried it up to the two boys. She handed it in and received a hungry leer in return. Returning down the stairs, she suppressed a shudder and wondered just how long she could tolerate the situation without breaking down.

The provision of meals for the two guests became a ritual added to all the others, and so, gradually, Karen allowed herself to become cook, cleaning woman, bed-maker and laundress to the household.

One evening, Charles was seeing her out of the front door as Trevor turned his van into the drive. Charles called to him, 'Would you be kind enough to take my fiancée home?'

'All right,' said Trevor, getting back into the driving seat.

Karen shrank away. 'No, thanks. I'm calling on Honor first. I'll take a bus.'

'Nonsense, Karen,' Charles insisted. 'Trevor won't mind. Just a little repayment for what you do for them.'

Some acknowledgment at least, Karen thought, for all her extra work. So far, Charles had not given her one word of thanks.

As Trevor reversed out of the drive, he gave her a cheeky grin. Karen edged away and he grinned at her again. 'Where do you want to go, miss?'

Karen directed him, thankful that Honor did not live far from Charles. Trevor drew up in front of Honor's house and Karen thanked him stiffly for the lift. 'Any time, miss,' he said. 'Anything to oblige a bird like you.' He drove off with a wave.

Karen rang the doorbell and Honor let her in. 'Come in, dear. I've just made coffee. Get your coat off while I call the men.'

'Men? Is Glenn here?'

'Yes. Don't look so miserable. He won't bite. Monty, Glenn, coffee.' Glenn came from the dining-room, stopped sharply at the sight of Karen, narrowed his eyes, then continued on his way into the room.

Honor said, laughing, 'Karen thinks you're going to eat her, Glenn. When I said you were here, she nearly turned and bolted.'

For the first time for days, Glenn met her eyes, but he said nothing. Honor poured the coffee and as she handed a cup to Karen she said, 'You look deathly, dear. Doesn't she, Monty?'

'Got a two-ended candle at your house, love?' Monty asked in his kindly way.

Karen was too weary to laugh, so she smiled and sighed.

'You're overdoing things,' Honor warned. 'Surely Charles is well enough now to look after himself?'

It took Karen a few moments to summon sufficient energy to answer. 'It's not just Charles, Honor. Those two boys he's got staying there—they're an awful lot of work.'

'But,' Monty said, 'I thought they looked after themselves?'

'At first they did, but bit by bit, I've taken over what they were supposed to be doing—their washing, their cooking, their cleaning...'

'Does Charles know?' Monty asked.

'Of course.'

'And he says nothing?'

'Except to cheer me on.'

Glenn, who had been turning the pages of a catalogue, flung it down. There was a brittle pause. Questions hovered like gulls floating on air currents. The questions remained unasked and unanswered and so dispersed, leaving nothing but their silence.

To her dismay, Karen found herself on the edge of tears. She rose quickly, wanting only to escape. 'Thanks for the coffee and,' she included Monty in her hasty glance, 'for the shoulders to weep on.'

'Going already?' Monty asked, helping her with her coat.

'I must. I've still got some notes to prepare for tomorrow, not to mention some homework to mark.' The words tumbled out, falling over each other.

Monty patted her shoulder and Karen found it almost hurtfully comforting. A little more sympathy, she thought desperately, and I'll burst into tears. And that she would not do in front of Glenn's dark, sardonic eyes.

'How long,' Monty said gently, 'are you going on tearing yourself in two, love?' Karen shook her head, biting her lips to still them. 'You'll crack,' he warned.

'What beats me,' said Honor, 'is that Charles is too blind to see it for himself.'

Karen shook her head dumbly. There was so much she could not tell Honor about Charles.

'Glenn?' Honor said, and with a gesture indicated Karen.

Glenn rose, but there was no eagerness in the movement, only a reluctant wish not to let Honor down.

'N-no, thanks,' Karen said hurriedly. 'Don't trouble yourself for me.' Her look was directed at Glenn, but rose no higher than his chest. His eyes she could not, would not, meet. 'I'll get a bus.'

She moved to the door, but he was there first, confronting her. 'You won't,' he said tersely, and sought in his pocket for the car keys.

He took her home in a silence that was total. When he pulled up at the kerb, Karen made to get out, unable to trust her voice even to thank him, but his hand came out, detaining her. He switched off the ignition but made no other move. What was he waiting for? Karen agonised. She moistened her lips. 'Glenn?' The word was a whisper. 'Would—would you like to come in?' She expected, hoped for, a refusal, but it did not come.

He allowed her to open the door, then he got out himself, locking the car. Karen found the key and opened the front door, noticing that the light on the landing upstairs was on. It indicated that lie tenants were out.

'Come in,' she invited, trying to push to the back of her mind all thoughts of the school work awaiting her attention.

She stood uncertainly in the centre of the living-room, trying to calculate how long it was since she had entertained him. So long, she thought, she had almost forgotten how to do so. 'Can I—can I get you anything?'

His presence in the house unnerved her, the slim, lithe build of him, the domination of his personality over, her, making her feel small and awkward and a child again.

'No, thanks.' He had not bothered to change from the suit he had worn all day at school, so there was still a semblance of respectability about his person. But it was plain from the way he considered her—it was a masculine, ruthlessly detached examination—that his thoughts had broken free from any restraints imposed by society. He rattled the coins in his pocket, letting them run through his fingers as if they were grains of sand. 'Isn't it time you looked facts in the face?'

His shock tactics jerked her thoughts from their customary rut, making her miserably aware of her appearance, her tiredness, her shadowed, careworn face.

In the rather drab room, he stood out as something vital and alive. The trapped energy within him was almost tangible and Karen found herself longing to reach out and dabble her fingers in it, allowing it to soak into her system and revitalise her.

'Why don't you break off the engagement?'

She longed to be at one with this man, instead of being constantly at odds with him, but the answer she must give would, she knew, only bring out the abrasiveness in him, not his sympathy.

She shook her head. 'Charles wants me, and I've got no one else.'

'You're tying yourself for life to a semi-invalid who will never show you real love, only a kind of paternal affection.'

'You're wrong.' Her voice faltered. 'His—his affection is anything but paternal.' She looked away, anywhere but into his eyes. 'Despite his size, he's not an old man.'

'And you like it?' His voice was harsh and grazing, like gravel searing the knee of a child.

Like it? It repelled her! She began to cry, wrenching the sobs from her lungs. How could she tell him how she felt when Charles made love to her? She sank on to the couch, covering her face. Now she had to give way to those tears.

Out it all came, through her tears, the over-work, the fatigue, the strain of simulating response to Charles's systematic wearing down of her barriers. The crying eased and Glenn, hands in pockets, moved for the first time. He turned to go.

Her fingers lifted from her cheeks, taking with them some of the dampness. .'Glenn?' He turned back. 'I ‑' I what? she thought. I want you to stay? I want to be your friend, your woman? I want you, not Charles, no other man but you? And that's how it's always been?

He closed the door which he had opened and strolled towards her. Had her thoughts been in her eyes? His manner had changed and her heart went crazy with—what, fear, delight?

He gripped her hair and pulled back her head so that he was looking into her face. 'What are you after? As if I didn't know. As if I can't guess. I know the ways of women too well to mistake the signs.'. He put his hands under her armpits and pulled her up.

'So,' he said with a strange kind of anger, 'you want the masochistic pleasure of being seduced by a man you hate? You've got little enough enjoyment in your life, and you've a lifetime of near-misery in front of you. Who am I to deprive you of the only sensual pleasure you'll probably ever know? I'm able and willing to supply it and you're eager and willing to have it. So have it you will.'

He lifted her and dropped her on to the couch, then put himself on top of her. His lips opened hers and she was lost. He found the buttons of her blouse and his hands moved and caressed wherever they chose,' all over her, arousing her to a pitch of ecstasy she had never known before. Time passed and when she was clinging to him and crying out for his love, he stopped, pulled himself upright and sat with his head in his hands.

Gasping, writhing with a terrible, gripping disappointment, Karen turned away from him on to her side. Her cheeks were burning with humiliation, and her hands punished a cushion, pressing it to her breasts.

He was pale, his fingers lifted through his hair, then he rose and paced the room. His shirt was open, leaving a gap where Karen's hands had, in the delight of the passion he had aroused in her, found their way, her cheeks savouring the roughness of the dark hair.

He turned on her and she cowered away. 'By God,' he muttered, 'I can't do it! I have some standards after all. I can't take another man's woman, even if that man is a self-opinionated, selfish bastard.'

He buttoned his shirt, tied his tie and pulled on his jacket which he had flung to the floor. He left the house without another word.

You're no good to a man, the young boy had said a lifetime ago. The words, and the truth in them, rang in her ears.

CHAPTER SEVEN

One evening near the end of term, Charles asked Karen, 'How is the music club going, my dear?'

She looked at him a little guiltily. 'I—don't know, Charles.'

He put aside the newspaper he was reading. 'What do you mean, you don't know? How can you run something and not know how it's going?'

Karen coloured slightly and fidgeted with the neck of her blouse. 'I—I meant to tell you, I don't run it now. Glenn Earl took it over. He—he felt that with all my other commitments, it was too much for me.'

There was a long pause, then Charles asked, in a toneless voice, 'How long has this been going on?'

Karen found herself resenting his pomposity. He's treating me, she thought, as if I were a schoolgirl again.

'Four or five weeks.'

He said, in a hurt tone, 'I think, my dear, you should have made an extra effort to keep it on, for my sake. I can't have a man like Glenn Earl running it. Heaven knows what sort of rubbish he's putting on for them. Pop groups, folk music, pandering to their naturally low tastes ... He'll ruin the whole concept, which was to improve the level of their musical appreciation.'

There was a painful silence and Karen felt he was waiting for her to apologise, but this she could not do. She had done no wrong. Why could he not be as understanding of her problems as he was of those of the people who went to him for advice?

'When I go back next term,' Charles went on, clasping his hands across his front, 'they will have lost interest in the classical music I played them and the club will cease to exist. I'll have to start from the beginning and it will take weeks to get the standard back to its former high level.' He turned to her as she sat beside him. 'You must go along to the next meeting, Karen, and tell Glenn Earl you'll take it over again.'

'But—but, Charles ‑' Karen was appalled by his directive. Relations between herself and Glenn were bad enough without making matters worse. He did not even look at her nowadays, let alone speak to her.

'I insist, my dear. It isn't much to ask of you, is it?'

Karen, weary of fighting battles—she had so many going on inside her—could do nothing but acquiesce.

Glenn continued to keep away from her. He had even stopped going to Honor's house. Honor kept challenging him when they met in the staff room. 'Got another woman, Glenn?' she asked once. 'Is that what's keeping you away from us?'

Glenn would smile and give no answer. But, Karen thought, she knew the answer. He didn't want to meet her at Honor's, even if it meant depriving himself of the friendship of his two best friends.

At Charles's request, Karen attended the final meeting of the music club before the end of term. The session had already started when she arrived. She slipped quietly into a seat, hoping to escape Glenn's notice, but he turned and saw her. His face masked over, his expression became shuttered. It was like looking again at the sculptured head Monique had made of him.

The thought of what she had been instructed by Charles to do—to reclaim the music club into her safe keeping from Glenn Earl's decadent control—kept coming between her mind and the music, strident and demanding though it was.

Since that evening of the passionate but meaningless lovemaking, she had not been the same person. She had glimpsed the Promised Land in Glenn's arms and although the door had been slammed shut in her face, she had hankered after it continuously. When Glenn had walked away, he had left her incomplete.

But without even knowing it, he had given her something. Every time Charles kissed and fondled her, she was able to endure it with far greater stoicism simply by using the device of imagining it was Glenn. So, in effect, if not in reality, she had been in Glenn's arms many times since that night.

Ironically, Charles thought she had at last fallen in love with him and that she was therefore almost ready for marriage.

The music Glenn was playing had not confirmed Charles's worst fears, but, Karen reflected, it was sufficiently different from the traditional classical sound he had favoured to make him go cold. It was modern music and to her ears, harsh and discordant, but the girls and young men around her were attuned, their expressions absorbed and appreciative.

It was in the interval that Karen, finding the courage only because she was forced to do so, rose to carry out her instructions. Glenn's back was turned to her and she approached him with the wariness of a bomb disposal expert walking towards a ticking package.

'Glenn?'

He was wiping the surface of a record and did not look her way. His cold silence nearly sent her back to her seat. But she went on,

'May I have a word with you?'

'What's stopping you?'

A reply, at least, so she went on tentatively, 'Charles is upset because I'm not running the music club any more.' He continued wiping the record. 'He—he wants me to take it over again.'

Glenn lowered the record on to the turntable. 'And what's your opinion? Do you want to take it over?'

There was an edge to his voice which seared her. She did not give a direct reply. 'Charles is—well, afraid that you might be playing them the wrong kind of music.'

The chatter and laughter of the waiting audience filled the silence. Then, 'Well, you've heard a sample of the kind of music I'm playing them. Is it "wrong"?'

Karen lifted her shoulders hopelessly. 'It doesn't appeal to me very much, but that isn't the point. I—don't think Charles would like it.'

He turned on her and did not bother to lower his voice. 'So he wouldn't like it. So you don't like it. That's too bad. I'm in charge of this outfit now. I can choose the kind of sound I play them. I did you a good turn, as I thought, in taking it off your shoulders, and now all you can do is to come whining to me that your precious fiancé doesn't like it. Well, he can go to hell. I'm here and here I stay.'

Karen shrank from him. She was back in her Karrie Durrant skin and he was humiliating her in front of a class. In the old days, she had no answer to his mockery, and it was no different now. She had to endure his abuse without saying a word in her own defence. She could not quarrel with him in front of a crowd of schoolchildren.

So she returned to her seat at the back and the music began again. Someone handed her a programme and she read the names—Berg, Malcolm Arnold, Bartok, Aaron Copland. Karen listened, and, in spite of herself, her attention was caught. The unfamiliar harmonies became less discordant as her ear accustomed itself to the modern idiom. A pattern emerged and with it, greater understanding.

When it was over, she watched the others file out and she waited, hoping Glenn would speak to her. But although he saw her sitting there, he went on packing up the equipment and putting away the records without a word of acknowledgement.

Slowly she left the hall and went to the staff room to collect her belongings. It was a pleasant evening and she stood for a moment on the steps looking out at the young blossom in the flower beds outside the front entrance to the school. She lingered and someone came round the corner from the car park behind the school.

'Hallo, Tim,' she said. 'Surprised to see you here. I thought you'd gone long ago.'

'I did, miss,' he answered, 'but when we got home, Mr Viv said you'd stayed behind for the music club and would we come and fetch you.'

'But Mr Vivian knows I'm going to my flat first, Tim. Then I'm going to his house.'

Tim frowned and seemed taken aback. 'But he said go and get her, miss, so he must be expecting you.' Still. Karen hesitated, feeling a little puzzled. Tim peered into her face. 'He looks a bit pale, miss.'

'Oh.' If Charles had sent for her, it might mean he was not feeling so well. She walked down the steps. 'In that case, I'd better go with you. It's very thoughtful of you. Where's Trevor?'

'Waiting, miss. In the van.'

He seemed so eager to get her there, she began to worry. Was Charles having a relapse and this was his way of sending for her without alarming the boys? On her way, she noticed with a jerk of the heart that there was one car left in the car park. It was Glenn's.

They reached the van and Karen made her way round to sit beside Trevor, who was grinning at her from the driver's seat. But Tim seized her arm and pulled her to the back of the van.

Affronted by his familiarity, she tried to pull her arm away. His grip was tighter than he realised, but when she pointed this out to him, instead of releasing her, he tightened his hold.

'Tim,' she said, 'please ‑'

He opened the van doors, put her in front of him and began to push her inside. There was something wrong about the way he was behaving. It was a mixture of familiarity and roughness and it frightened her. What, she wondered anxiously, were they up to? Playing some sort of game?

'Go on,' said Tim, 'get in.'

Karen began to resist now, to look round for help, but there was no one about. With a jerk she was free, but Trevor had joined Tim. Being stronger and taller than his younger brother, he caught her, swung her round and half lifted, half thrust her into the van.

It was dark inside and she tripped and stumbled on to her knees. 'Stop it,' she said, refusing to take the episode seriously, 'stop it, both of you. You've had your fun, now let me go.'

'Fun?' said Trevor, his grin broader than ever, 'that's to come. We haven't even started on you yet.' He pushed her to the floor.

'Stop it!' she shouted, terrified now. 'Tim, make him stop. Tim...'

Tim appeared on the other side of her and his face in the semi-darkness seemed as evil as his brother's. A thought began to take root and grow rapidly. Not that, she thought, oh, no, not that... Not two of them. She might fight off one, but not two.

She tried to scream, but a warped and twisted croak came out. A hand came over her mouth and she bit and clawed at it. Another hand hit her on the cheek and she cried out. The hand on her mouth lifted and came back harder. She felt warm liquid trickle over her chin and down her neck.

She struggled with all her strength, only to have hands pull at her hair, her arms, tearing at her. 'Stop it, you two,' she cried, 'stop it! What do you think you'll get out of it?'

'Guess,' said Trevor, between his teeth, 'just you guess. It's you I'm goin' to get, you!'

'Let me go!' she shrieked. 'I promise not to tell, only let me go...'

She sensed a sudden relaxation of their hold and twisted her legs free. She managed to kneel up and beat at the doors, but she was caught and thrown sideways.

There was an answering hammering from outside. 'What's the matter in there? What's going on? Open these doors!'

Two hands came over Karen's mouth, two more pressed round her throat. Breathing became difficult, then almost impossible. Terror gave her a fresh spasm of desperate energy and she writhed like a trapped and raging animal. She managed to free her mouth and gasped, 'Glenn, Glenn!' over and over again.

Hands began to pull at the two doors which Tim had tied roughly together. 'Open these doors!' the voice demanded again. 'Open up or I'll get the police.'

'Let her go,' Trevor muttered, 'I'll cut the rope and we'll make a getaway.' He flicked out a knife, sliced through the cord and pushed the doors. He sprang out, but Glenn dived and caught him. Karen thrust forward and grasped Tim's ankle.

'Now, you two little devils,' said Glenn, 'you've got a hell of a lot of talking to do.'

Trevor struggled. 'Well, we're not going to do it to you. Catch us if you can!'

Tim freed himself from Karen's hold, leapt from the van and ran. Trevor tried to follow, but Glenn held on. 'Let him go,' Karen said, crumpling into a corner, 'just let him go. I never want to see the two of them again.'

Glenn loosened his hold and they loped away. Then he climbed into the van and lifted Karen under the armpits, but she sagged. She hid her face in her hands and sobbed. Two arms went round her and she was cradled in them. Glenn's cheek rubbed against her hair in a stroking action.

'My God,' he muttered, breathing deeply, 'my God!' as though, Karen thought, she was the most precious thing on earth. 'Did they rape you, Karen?' He gave her a little shake. 'Tell me.'

'No,' she whispered against his neck where he had put her face, 'but they were going to. If you hadn't come along ‑'

His hold tightened. 'Glenn,' she moaned, 'oh, Glenn!' She raised her arms and put them round him, pressing herself against his body. 'Don't let me go. Just hold me...'

He lifted her chin, saw her swollen mouth and with the gentleness of a mother kissing a baby, put his lips to it.

'I love you, Glenn,' she whispered, 'I love you,' and hid her face against him.

He became so still, every single part of him, Karen thought that even his heart had stopped beating. She reproached herself at once. She had told him something that a woman should never tell a man like Glenn, that she was his for the asking, but she didn't care. He could never love a woman, truly love her, she was sure of that, and knowing that she loved him wouldn't make him like her any better. But the relief of telling him was so great she slumped again.

He came to life and lifted her. 'I'll take you home.'

'Not to Charles, Glenn, not to Charles.'

'To my place first.'

He carried her to his car and later, when they arrived at his house, into the living-room, lowering her into an armchair. He brought water and cotton wool and bathed her injuries, wiping away the blood. Her head was throbbing, the bump under her hair where her head had banged against the van side had swollen and she felt mentally, as well as physically, bruised.

He gave her a drink, well diluted, and took a stronger one for himself. He asked her how it had all come about and she told him.

He said, 'You could get them for assault, let alone attempted rape. A solicitor will know. Charles Vivian will have to turn them out of his house.'

Karen said slowly, because it was painful to move her lips, 'I'm not going to "get" them for anything. I'm going to try and pretend it never happened. I'm not even going to tell Charles.'

'Don't be a fool, Karen. How the hell can you not tell him? How are you going to explain away those injuries?'

'I'll—I'll think of something. I'll say I was carrying a typewriter and fell.'

'You realise they might try it on again? If they get away with it once ... And next time they'll be more subtle, they won't risk it where there might be someone around to interfere.'

'I'll be on my guard.'

He moved round the room restlessly, hands in pockets. For a while Karen watched him.

'Anyway,' she said, 'they would swear I connived and co-operated. You can't win against that type.'

He stared for a long time at the deep-piled carpet. The whole house still held a woman's touch, she thought, and remembered, with deep pain, his former wife.

'Glenn.' She had to tell him.

'Yes?'

'I'm sorry for what I said in the van.'

He gave a twisted smile. 'I won't hold it against you. You would have loved the devil himself if he'd saved you from those little swine, as I did.'

'Glenn,' she whispered, 'I meant it.'

'Thanks for the compliment.' His voice was dead. 'What do you want me to do about it?'

The question, stark, harsh, spoken without emotion, appalled her. She possessed few illusions about him, but he was trampling on those that she did have. He was trampling on her self-respect, too, but, she thought bitterly, he was skilled at that, having done it so much in the past. She should, she told herself miserably, have known better than to have bared her soul, to have allowed the stress of the circumstances to carry her away.

It was the end of the road in their relationship. She could stand no more humiliation at his hands. Shakily she stood and seized her coat and handbag, then she went to the door as fast as her condition would allow.

He put herself between her and the hallway and impelled her backwards into the room again. His hands gripped her shoulders and she dropped her coat and bag in an effort to push him away. But she had left all her stamina in the van.

He won without even trying, so she took refuge in crying. He pulled her down on to the couch and held her in his arms until the crying stopped. In addition to swollen lips, she now had puffy eyes, but the physical discomfort was nothing compared with the injuries to her pride.

He turned her face towards him. He looked long and hard at her eyes and her mouth, then he kissed them one by one. She thought, fiercely, I don't want his pity, and jerked away.

'Look, Karen, let's talk this out.'

'There's nothing to talk out,' she responded, tears still thick in her voice. 'I don't ask anything of you, certainly not love. I just had to tell you, that's all.'

Glen released her to pour himself another drink, which he threw down his throat. Then he stared out at the bright evening. He spoke to the window pane.

'I'm no good to any woman. The better the woman, the less use relatively I am. I may be well off financially, but I don't have the social graces.'

She began to protest, but knew it was useless. He would never believe her protestations that his unorthodoxy, his refusal to conform did not matter, did not and never would alter her feelings for him. He would merely dismiss her protests as prejudice in his favour, now that he knew she loved him.

He went on, still with his back to her, 'I despise conformity. I don't care what others think of me. I opted out of other people's ways of life long ago. I strain after no set standards. I'm a loner, a solitary.' His body moved as though he were having a mental struggle. 'And I like my freedom.' He turned at last and walked towards her. 'I'm a dead loss, Karen.' A pause, then with a twist of bitterness, 'Stick with Charles Vivian. He can give you security, good clean living and love—of a sort.'

Karen rose wearily. She knew defeat when she faced it. Despite the fact that she had told herself that she expected nothing in return, her disappointment was almost unbearable.

He asked, 'Where do you want to go?'

She sighed. 'Charles will be expecting me to get his evening meal.'

Glenn drew up at Charles's house and Karen thanked him. She began to get out of the car, but Glenn said, with a decision with which she could not argue, 'I'm coming in.'

She responded, tiredly, 'There's no need, thank you. I'll tell Charles in my own way.' But he ignored her objections.

As she opened the front door, Karen glanced apprehensively up the stairs, but there was no sign of the two tenants.

Charles called out, 'Is that you, Karen?'

'Yes, Charles.' Putting a false lightness into her voice, she added, 'Glenn's with me.'

'Glenn Earl? Why?' Charles appeared at the living-room door and his eyes slid unseeingly over Karen and settled on her companion.

'Glenn.'

'Charles. Feeling better?'

They shook hands. It was a mechanical gesture, prompted by custom, not friendliness.

'Yes, thanks.' Then Charles looked at Karen again. 'Karen, my dear!'

'I—I'm afraid I had an accident. I—I slipped and fell while I ‑'

'I'll tell you what happened,' Glenn broke in grimly.

Karen squeezed past Charles as he stood in the doorway and went into the living-room. The others followed. 'Glenn,' she faced him, 'please don't ‑'

Charles glared at Glenn. 'Who's responsible for this?' He gestured towards Karen.

'I told you, Charles,' Karen broke in, worried by Charles's extraordinarily belligerent tone, 'I was carrying a typewriter and I ‑'

'Those two little swine you're harbouring upstairs,' Glenn rasped, 'that's who's responsible.'

'The Sutter brothers? But they wouldn't do a thing like that.' Charles indicated Karen's bruised face.

'No,' Glenn snarled, 'nobody you thought fit to receive your attentions would, in your opinion, be capable of beating a woman up and then attempting to rape her.'

Charles stared at her. 'Is this true?' Averting her eyes, Karen nodded. 'I don't believe it.'

'You'd doubt the word of the girl you're going to marry?' Glenn queried unbelievingly. 'You think she co-operated, went with them willingly?' He paused. 'Or do you think I did it?'

'I wouldn't put anything past you, Earl.'

'Charles,' Karen cried in anguish, 'you're making the most terrible mistake! Glenn stopped them. If it hadn't been for him ‑'

Glenn bit out, 'He'd rather the devil came up from hell and saved you instead of me. He's stuck with me now because he'll be under an obligation to me for the rest of his life.' He thrust his hands into his pockets. 'My God, the irony! I save his wife-to-be from being raped and he accuses me of doing it!'

Karen put her hand on Glenn's arm, but he shook it off. She tried explaining to Charles what had happened. His expression told her he still had not properly taken it in.

'You'll have to throw them out,' Glenn said. 'And tell the police.'

'When I want your advice, Earl,' Charles said furiously, 'I'll ask for it. Throw them out is something I will not do.'

'So, in effect, you're prepared to condone what they did to Karen? You're saying "All is forgiven, boys, come back to the fold"? And you don't mind if they try it on again, somewhere where she's out of reach of help?' He looked at Charles narrowly, as if a thought had struck him. 'You realise that with two unscrupulous little devils like that in the house, you're not safe? You're alone at night with them, aren't you? Suppose some night they took it into their heads to beat you up?'

Charles turned pale, 'After all I'm doing for them?'

'There's no one like the young for biting the hand that feeds them,' Glenn said with a tight smile. 'Your life-long experience among them as a schoolteacher should have told you that.'

Charles put a hand to his ribs as if protecting his heart.

'Charles!' Karen cried. 'Are you ill again?' She urged him into a chair.

'No, no, my dear, it's just ‑' He looked old, as old as he had looked in hospital, Karen thought. He was silent and staring. Karen, with Glenn standing near, gazed at Charles. Karen looked with compassion, Glenn with something close to contempt. He had got through to him at last, he seemed to be thinking, not because of any possible danger to the man's fiancée, but because of a possible threat to himself.

'All right.' said Charles hoarsely, 'so the boys have got to go.'

Glenn looked at Karen coldly. 'Want a lift home?'

'It's kind of you to offer, Glenn, but'—she looked again at Charles, hoping he would tell her to go—'but I've got to get Charles a meal. Then I've a load of housework to do.'

'After what you've been through? You look terrible. You should go home and go to bed.'

Charles said slowly, 'There's no need for you to worry about my fiancée's welfare. I'm aware of my responsibilities as far as she's concerned.'

'Like hell you are!' Glenn looked from Charles to Karen and back again. 'If you were any sort of a man, you'd use your eyes, see what a state she's in and tell her to go home and stay there. You're diabolically selfish, Charles, you always have been.'

Glenn left the house and Karen ran after him. He got into his car. 'Glenn, thank you for all you did.

Thank you for ‑'

'Keep your thanks and your gratitude for that, smug demi god you're going to marry.' He switched on the ignition, and with a jerk released the handbrake, holding the car on the footbrake.

'It's bloody laughable,' he went on scathingly. 'Half an hour ago you as good as offered yourself to me body and soul, for the taking. I, like a gentleman, thanked you kindly and turned the offer down. Then your fiancé as good as accuses me of attempted rape!' He made a savage noise with his throat and drove off, leaving her staring after him and crying out his name.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Tim and Trevor Sutter did not return to Charles's house that night, Karen made their beds as she always did, and tidied their rooms. As she touched their possessions, she had to suppress a feeling of revulsion.

At Charles's suggestion, she returned home earlier than usual that evening. Perhaps, Karen thought, he had had a twinge of conscience after Glenn's acid comments.

She stayed away from school next day. She phoned the secretary and told her she had a bad cold. Honor called that evening, catching Karen just before she left for Charles's house. Since she was too close a friend for Karen to lie to her, she told Honor the truth.

Honor was appalled and said so. 'Tim Sutter's not been to school, love. His parents don't know where he is, or his brother. The deputy head, Miss Worth, said they're talking of calling in the police in case something's happened to them, although I think they're tough enough to look after themselves. After what they did to you, I think the police should be brought in. The truth would come out then and they'd be for it.'

'Well, I'm not taking any action. Nothing happened, after all, except that I got a few bruises. Honor, has Glenn said anything?'

'Not a word, dear. We've all been given to understand you've got a cold.'

'If it hadn't been for him, Honor ... How is he?' Karen hoped Honor would not read anything into the question, but it must, Karen decided, have been something, some note of unconscious tenderness in her tone that had Honor looking at her a little oddly. She shrugged.

'Mooning around,' Honor commented, 'saying nothing, as morose as ever. Monty's wondering why he hasn't been round lately.' I could tell him, Karen thought. 'I think,' Honor went on, 'he's gone off song, as they say. His painting has come to a temporary stop. I doubt if all's right with his world. He always did say he couldn't work when there was something pressing on his mind.'

Honor gave Karen a lift in her car to Charles's house.

'The boys haven't come back,' Charles told her as soon as she arrived. He spoke of them with something like affection. It repelled her that he could do so, knowing what they had done to her. Surely, she thought, he wasn't worried about them? Was his so-called charity such that he could overlook the almost criminal act they had committed? And with her, his future wife?

'Can I be honest, Charles?' He looked at her with surprise. 'I know you'll be shocked, but I hope they never do come back.'

Charles shook his head slowly. 'It's so wrong to bear grudges, Karen, especially against the young.' He took her hand. 'But don't think I don't appreciate your concern, my dear. They know I've been ill and I'm still not fully recovered. When they do come back, I don't think they're so bad inside they would harm an invalid like me.'

His statement, his thoughts only of himself and not of her, who had actually suffered at their hands, stupefied her. Selfish, Glenn had called him. It seemed, she reflected, Glenn was right. In spite of Charles's apparent concern for others, he was as self-orientated as the rest of us. But, she thought, with a sudden disloyalty which took her by surprise, most of us don't go around as if we were wearing permanent halos.

That evening, Charles said, 'I'm feeling lonely.' With a pang of fear, Karen guessed what was coming, 'I'd like us to marry soon, Karen. It need not make any difference to our lives. If you prefer it, we could have separate bedrooms. There would be no need for you to fulfil any of your wifely obligations at first, at least, not until my heart is stronger and I'm fully fit again.' His arm went avuncularly round her shoulders. 'You know what I mean?'

Karen thought, I know only too well.

'I would make no demands on you, my dear,' Charles continued, 'and,' as an afterthought, 'it would be understood that you would reciprocate and make none on me.'

Karen closed her eyes and felt Glenn's arms gripping her, felt his hands fondling her breasts, his lips on her throat, her arms, her body, her very being reaching out to be taken in its entirety by him. 'Wifely obligations', Charles called it! She shivered and moved away.

'I suppose,' she said mechanically, 'that would be the best arrangement.'

Charles smiled and kissed both her cheeks—her lips were still puffy. 'You give me great joy, Karen. When shall it be? Two or three weeks? No sense in waiting.'

Karen panicked. 'After Easter, Charles, when you're fit enough to go back to work, then you'll be able to stand the strain of the change in your way of living. Because,' she hastened to add, in case it had escaped his notice, that after their wedding his world, night and day, would be invaded by and shared by another, 'it will be different, whatever you say. You—you mustn't take any risks.'

He interpreted her delaying tactics as a deep concern for his health and thanked her for her consideration.

Karen stayed away from work next day, too. After school, Honor called and brought Jerome. He stared at Karen's face and she told him her lips were sore because of her cold. To her relief, he believed her. While she talked shop with Honor, Jerome wandered round, found her typewriter and banged on it with two fingers.

He told her as they were leaving that Mr Earl had stopped running the music club. Karen was thrown off balance by this piece of news. 'Who's taken it over, Jerome?'

He shrugged. 'No one. There just isn't a music club now, miss.'

That, she thought, was something else she would have to tell Charles, but she did not relish having to break the news. For the rest of the evening, Karen nursed her lips, bathing them, and applying cream. Slowly the improvement began to show. Next day, she would be able to go back to school without having to face too many awkward questions.

She was preparing for bed and was in her dressing-gown when the door bell rang. She did not believe it was really Glenn until he stepped uninvited into the hall.

'What do you want?' It was a belligerent welcome, but she felt in no fit state, either mentally or physically, to receive a male visitor. She was wearing no make-up and her feet were bare. Her dressing-gown was faded and had seen her through adolescence into womanhood. The belt had been lost years ago and there was nothing but her clutching fingers to hold the edges of it together.

But, as he looked her over, there was no contempt in his eyes. No admiration either, she told herself, just blankness.

'Nothing immoral,' he replied with a sardonic smile, 'so you can stop looking at me as if I were a boyfriend who had caught you off guard.'

She coloured deeply and he seemed amused. She, too, she decided, had no time for social niceties at that hour, so she challenged bad-temperedly, 'Why have you abandoned the music club? Out of spite? To annoy Charles? You might have found someone else to take it over instead of closing it completely. It was doing a good cultural job among the kids.'

'Thanks,' he said sarcastically, 'for your touching gratitude for my having taken it off your back in the first instance.'

She sagged then, with tiredness, with despair, with the futility of it all—their quarrelling, her love for him, his failure to reciprocate. As she sat down, he found a seat, too. 'Sorry,' she said on a sigh. 'It was what Charles wanted, I suppose. When he returns to school, he can start it up again, if he wants.'

There was a pause and she felt him looking her over.

'Your face is getting better,' he commented at last.

'I suppose it is. Not that I'm much to look at when it hasn't been maltreated.'

In the short silence, her eyes looked everywhere but into his. 'What are you waiting for?' he said softly. 'For me to contradict you?'

Her lip trembled and she bit into it viciously. When she could speak, when the lump in her throat had dispersed she said, 'I don't expect compliments from you. I never got them in the past, and I don't look for them now.'

'Come now,' he leaned forward, 'what was my portrait of you if not a compliment?'

'All right,' sourly, 'so it was a compliment, no more. Certainly not the truth.'

He gave an exaggerated sigh. 'Have it your way...' An ember in the grate came startlingly, briefly to surprising life, lighting the room, then it died away. 'How's your middle-aged lover?' Still the sarcasm, the barely suppressed amusement.

'If you mean Charles,' she said shortly, 'quite well.' Silence again, then, 'Glenn.' He looked up. 'The boys haven't come back.'

'I didn't think they would. Let them stew. Why should you be so concerned about them?'

'I'm not. Charles is.'

Glenn made a noise of disgust. 'He rates those little devils higher than you in his scale of importance. Some husband he's going to make you!'

Karen said, pulling together the edges of her dressing-gown, 'He wants us to get married soon.' Glenn did not speak. 'He said it need not make any difference to our way of living. I'd be there to look after him, that's all.'

'That's all,' he responded savagely. 'An unpaid housekeeper, cook and servant. Someone to look after his needs by day and keep him warm at night.'

'No. At first, he says, separate rooms. Until he's fit enough to—well, fit enough.'

Glenn shouted with laughter, mocking, jeering laughter. 'Fit enough, I suppose, to cope with the unbridled passion of his brand new, demanding young wife. My God, you're going to have a happy marriage!'

He stood and confronted her, pulling her up and jerking her roughly against him. His nearness made nonsense of her powers of reasoning. The hand forcing up her chin, the proximity of his sensitive, yet slightly cruel mouth to hers, brought her to the edge of complete surrender, but he was too angry to care that he had so nearly won.

'Can't you see it, girl?' he rasped. 'Can't you see the hell you're walking into? Can't you accept the advice of an experienced man? One who knows a damned sight more than you do about human nature, who's been through hell himself? Stay single, Karen. Join up with a man if you must, but make it a man, a man who can show you the joys of lovemaking, the deep satisfaction, the happiness of shared pleasure. Who'd ask nothing of you but to be there...'

'Glenn,' she said miserably, 'I'm not like that. I'm so different from you, my values, my standards. We don't live on the same plane, either morally or intellectually.'

'All right,' he answered viciously, 'so we don't, although I'd like half a chance to disprove your contention. But nor do you have a single thing in common with Charles Vivian. You're heading for purgatory, Karen. For God's sake, back out now, while you've still got the chance.'

Karen shook her head, whispering, 'I can't, Glenn. Charles isn't well, he's had one heart attack. He could have another, and if I were the cause of it, it would be on my conscience for the rest of my life.'

He thrust her away from him and said between his teeth, 'You're a stupid, obstinate, masochistic little idiot. You're determined to suffer, so suffer you will and you're going to see to it that nobody's going to stop you. From this moment on, I wash my hands of you. Why should I care what happens to you? What happens to any damned woman, for that matter. They're all the same, out for what they can get, no matter how much they have to prostitute themselves to get it.'

He strode out and she didn't call him back. They seemed to have nothing to talk about any more.

One morning Karen passed Tim Sutter in the corridor. He smiled cheekily and she asked him where he and his brother had been.

'Sleeping rough,' he said. 'Park benches, bus shelters. Can we go back to old man Viv's and get our things, miss?'

'No. I'll pack them up tonight and bring them to school tomorrow.'

'Did you get the police on us, miss?'

'I did not get the police on to you. But if you and your brother are involved in the slightest bit of wrong doing from now on, I'm informing the police of everything that happened that day in the van.'

He grinned again. 'They wouldn't believe you, miss. It would be your word against both of ours. And we'd say you agreed to come with us.'

'It wouldn't be that easy, Tim. Don't forget Mr Earl was a witness.'

'He wasn't. He didn't see anything, did he?'

'You say much more, boy,' Karen said, showing real anger at last, 'and I'll go straight to the head teacher and tell him everything.'

He scuttled away.

Karen did not revive the music club. She thought it best to leave it in abeyance until Charles returned. When she had told him that Glenn had disbanded it, Charles was not angry as she had thought he might be. He was, in fact, pleased, saying that if it didn't exist, no one could ruin it. He was confident, he said, that when he returned he could resuscitate it and catch the old members' interest again.

The term came to an end at last and Charles went to his brother's and sister-in-law's for the Easter holiday.

He had invited Karen to accompany him, but a day or two before they were due to leave, she developed a cold. Charles said frankly that he would rather she did not go with him, in case he caught her cold.

His bluntness hurt, but she reasoned her resentment away. If he had caught it and it had gone to his chest, immeasurable damage might have been done in the way of complications.

Honor and Monty went touring with their caravan, so Karen took her lonely walks in the local woods. Once she met Glenn. He, too, was out walking, as lonely as she was, but she thought, unlike her, he took his loneliness along with him willingly, like a favourite dog on a leash.

Karen slowed down and smiled, thinking he would stop and talk, but he just nodded and passed on. Her breath came quickly, tears threatened. He had humiliated her again and in the light of what she had told him, and the way she had opened her heart to him, his dismissal of her was all the harder to bear.

At home again, she cried. Crying alone, she thought, sobbing into a pillow, when there was no one to hear and no one to kiss you better, was the worst kind of crying, in the world.

When the holiday was over and the summer term began, Charles returned to work. He was welcomed by the staff and he thanked them for all the gifts and good wishes they had sent. Glenn sat alone, watching the proceedings with a sarcastic look.

Karen stood at Charles's side and it almost took on the fuss and glamour of a wedding reception.

It was about the wedding that Charles talked a few evenings later.

'A simple ceremony, Karen. When shall it be, my dear—three weeks from now?'

Three weeks? she thought. Was that all that was left to her? Was she wrong to go ahead with the marriage as Glenn had warned? But didn't she feel affection for Charles? What else was there in life for her if she did not marry him? No other man had shown any interest in her and—yes, she had to be honest, even if it hurt— she wanted children, she desperately wanted children. Did it matter by whom she had them?

'Three weeks,' she agreed, her feelings numb as if desensitised by an injection.

'It will give us time to settle our affairs,' Charles said, beaming delightedly. He pulled her close. 'You know I love you, Karen. You're the sun in my sky, you know that?'

With Charles's consent, Karen asked Honor and Monty to act as witnesses at the ceremony. Charles's brother John and his wife Madeleine had promised to attend. Karen phoned her mother and she wished them both well, saying she was very sorry but she could not get away. Suppressing her hurt, Karen said she understood.

The local authority had granted Karen and Charles two days' leave of absence for a brief honeymoon. A few days before the wedding, Karen bought a pale pink dress and jacket, taking the opportunity also to add to her rather sparse wardrobe. She felt that, as Charles Vivian's wife, she should dress to suit her altered status in life. '

One lunchtime, they were in the staff room when, to Karen's surprise, Charles approached Glenn. He was sitting in his usual position, with his feet up on the table. He was reading and as Charles came to stand beside him, Glenn snapped the book shut and swung his' feet to the floor.

'Glenn.' Charles was smiling, his manner extraordinarily friendly, but Glenn, standing, remained aloof, his face set, his eyes narrow and suspicious.

When Charles spoke, Glenn smiled slightly as if his suspicions had been confirmed. Charles wanted something, so Charles was charm itself.

'Next weekend,' said Charles, 'I'm marrying Karen.' Glenn's eyes swung across the room, hit her like a whip and withdrew, leaving her scarred and in pain.

'Some time ago,' Charles went on, 'she told me you had painted and exhibited a portrait of her. I should like to buy that portrait, Glenn.' There was a long, difficult silence. 'Name the price, I don't care how much, and you shall have it.'

Glenn stood and pocketed his hands. 'Sorry, Charles. N.F.S. Not for sale. Not even to you.'

'But,' Charles spluttered, 'my dear man, what possible value can it have for you? To a painter, any one of his works, surely, is a saleable commodity. Otherwise, why does he paint? Not, in this material day and age, simply for personal satisfaction, for purely aesthetic reasons, with no thought of reward or profit. After all, even a painter has to live.'

Glenn put a foot up on a chair and rested his elbow on his knee. 'I live in all the comfort I need, Charles, thanks to my job here. I'm not a poor man. I can afford to say, "no, thanks" to a would-be buyer of my products. I'm saying no now, Charles. I'm sorry.'

'But damn it, man, she's my future wife. I want that portrait. I shall be proud of it, I shall cherish it, you need have no fear of that.'

Glenn shook his head. "That painting of Karen, is unique, Charles, unique in that it could not be repeated.' He looked across the room at Karen. Was there accusation in his eyes? she wondered. 'She's changed beyond recall. The girl I painted doesn't exist any more, I couldn't repeat it if I tried. So sorry, even if you offered me a fortune, I still wouldn't sell.' He lowered his foot to the floor. 'But come to my studio and have a look at it, any time you want.'

Charles turned scarlet, ran his finger round his collar and stamped from the room. Glenn picked up his book again, sat down, replaced his feet on the table and read as though nothing had happened.

Honor, sitting next to Karen, made a face. 'What you might call an impasse.'

'But,' Karen whispered, 'I told Charles a long time ago Glenn wouldn't sell.'

'I think,' said Honor quietly, 'I follow Charles's line of thought. He reasoned that no artist, however dedicated, would sacrifice material gain for artistic ideals. In other words, if he offered enough money, Glenn would grab it with one hand and hand over the painting with the other.'

'A gross miscalculation on Charles's part,' Karen said.

'You're so right,' Glenn commented.

Obviously, Karen thought, she and Honor had not kept their voices low enough.

As Glenn went out, he said carelessly to Karen, 'Bring him along to look at it. It's only right that the man you're going to marry should see his beloved portrayed with a rare beauty by a discerning painter, because after a few years of living with him, she's going to turn into a plain, downtrodden neurotic.' He left them.

'Good heavens,' said Honor, 'what's got into him? It's time Monty had -a talk with him. He hasn't been near us for weeks. From all accounts, he's living like a hermit.'

Two days before the wedding, Charles said to Karen, 'Ring Glenn Earl, my dear, and ask if it's convenient for us to go and see that picture of you. I want to try again to persuade him to sell. I'll say I want to make it a wedding present to you.'

Monique answered the phone: So, Karen thought bitterly, she's there again. How, she reproached herself, could she have been so naive as to expect otherwise? They had been married, officially divorced. But you can't break off the feeling between a man and a woman as if it were a piece of chocolate. You digest it and it becomes part of you. And if there's still a bit of the bar left, you want some more. So he wanted some more of Monique, and no doubt she gave in abundance.

On the phone, Monique's manner was distant and sulky, but with reluctance she passed Karen over to Glenn.

'What's stopping you?' Glenn asked tersely, when Karen asked permission to take Charles to look at the portrait.

'I—I just thought ‑' Do I have to grovel? she asked herself unhappily, 'I thought I should ask you first.'

'You can come now,' he said with sudden weariness, and rang off.

When they arrived, Glenn opened the door and replied to Charles's over-polite 'Good evening' with a nod. At all costs, Charles's expression said, as he followed Karen up the stairs to the studio, 'I, must be pleasant.' He studied the portrait which Glenn had carelessly indicated.

'It's damned good, Glenn, damned good.' Glenn smiled and there was a deep cynicism about it. Monique hovered, sulky, threatening, malevolent.

Charles clinked the money in his pocket. 'I'd like it, Glenn. I'd like to buy it. I want to give it to Karen as a wedding gift. I'd ‑' he cleared his throat self-consciously, 'I'd appreciate the gesture more than I can say if you would change your mind and sell it to me. As I said before, name the price and I'll ‑'

'There is no price, Charles,' Glenn said quietly. 'I'm not parting with it.'

Charles pulled at his lips. 'Look, Glenn——' Glenn shook his head. Charles's hand trembled slightly as he pulled out his cheque book.

'You can put that away,' Glenn said. 'The painting's mine, it remains mine.'

'Yes,' said Monique savagely, and they all turned to her. 'Like the girl in the picture. She's yours, too, isn't she, Glenn? All yours, body and soul.'

The cheque book shook its way back to the Jacket pocket. The pen followed a quivering path to its resting place. Charles's head turned and stared at the woman who had spoken as if he had never seen her before.

Then he moved his eyes and said, 'Karen?' She shook her head. To Monique, Charles said, 'Are you implying that my fiancée is your ex-husband's mistress?'

'You're dead right I am, Charles.'

'On what do you base that statement?'

Monique sidled up to him, her low-cut dress half revealing, half hiding her ample breasts. 'You know me, Charles. We've often met in the past, haven't we? I wouldn't lie to you. I've seen them together more times than I can remember. He's often brought her here. One night he made love to her in front of me ‑'

'That's a bloody lie!'

Monique smiled at her ex-husband. 'Well, a slight exaggeration, but you threw me out, you can't deny that. I admit I tried to scratch her eyes out, but Charles,' she appealed to him, 'could you blame me? I still love him. He divorced me, I didn't divorce him. I couldn't stand back and let another woman carry on from where I left off.'

'Charles,' Karen put her hand on Charles's arm, 'she's lying, lying ... The night Monique is talking about when Glenn brought me here was the night you had your heart attack. He'd taken me to the hospital and I was in such a state he didn't like to take me straight home and leave me on my own, so we came here and he gave me a drink ‑'

Charles turned away, extracting his arm from Karen's as though it was contaminated. 'So you deceived me, all this time you've been deceiving me. Even the night I was so bad, you were here, letting him—him—make love to you.' He said to Glenn 'You're a treacherous, unscrupulous swine, Earl. You're beneath contempt.'

'Glenn,' Karen pleaded, 'tell him,' but Glenn turned away, giving the faintest shrug. Monique laughed hysterically.

Karen followed Charles out of the house and he let himself into his car. Karen wondered what to do. Did he want her to go with him? He leant across and unlocked the passenger door and Karen got in.

For a long time they sat outside Glenn's house. 'Charles,' Karen said at last, 'what Monique said isn't true. She made it up.'

'So you didn't go back with Earl the night I was taken ill?'

'Yes, I did, but ‑'

He moved his hand as if there was no more to say.

'But he only gave me a drink to make me pull myself together, then he took me home.'

'So you can swear you've never been with him, he's never made love to you, never touched you?'

She remembered Glenn's kisses, his hands, demanding, ruthless, on her body, the desire he planted in her and nurtured like a dedicated gardener cultivating a prize bloom. She remembered the way he had cut it off in its prime and thrown it to rot on the rubbish heap.

The silence grew and Charles gripped the rim of the steering wheel. 'I don't trade in handled and used goods. I don't want a secondhand woman as my wife.'

Karen sat staring out of the window at Glenn's house.

'I've had my suspicions about you before,' Charles went on, 'the way he kept looking at you ‑'

'Sketching me to paint my portrait. I told you.'

Cars came towards them, headlights dazzling. Karen closed her eyes against the glare.

Charles ignored her words. 'That time he brought you to my house when he alleged those two boys had beaten you up and tried to rape you.'

Alleged, he said. The sun in his sky, he had called her, but still he didn't believe her, the woman he would have made his wife—never had believed her, she thought, probably never would.

'It's the end, Charles,' she said, pulling off his ring and leaving it on the shelf below the windscreen. 'Goodbye.'

She got out of the car and he did nothing to stop her. He drove away.

CHAPTER NINE

For hours, Karen wandered about. It was raining, a drenching downpour, but the fact passed her by. She walked through the woods, under the dripping trees, finding her way to a bench and sitting on it, wet though it was. She was soaked to the skin, her shoes squelched, her hair hung lank, clinging to her neck and chin.

The clock on the local church chimed once. One o'clock. I should, she thought, be at home in bed. Then she turned and walked again, following wherever her feet took her. They went of their own volition to a doorstep. Her hand raised itself and lifted the knocker.

A long time passed and she knocked again. Perhaps he was in bed. As she turned away, the door opened. In the light of the hall, Glenn looked haggard and old. He seemed to have pulled on some clothes, any clothes to make him decent. His shirt was open, hanging over his trousers.

'I'm sorry,' she mouthed, 'go back to bed.' She turned away again, hopeless and shivering.

'Stop playing the martyr and come in.'

It was the welcome she should have expected, Karen told herself—no kindliness, no sympathy. She shook her head and an arm shot out, gripping hers. She was pulled into the hall and she stood there, dripping, on the mat.

'I'm sorry,' was all she could manage, 'I'm sorry.'

'Get upstairs,' he commanded. Karen obeyed. 'Into the studio.' Up another flight of stairs and she went into the studio, blinking under the bright light. What she saw constricted her throat and brought a hand to her mouth. '

Her portrait had been slashed diagonally from corner to corner, though an eye, a cheek, the nose and down to the side of the neck.

'No,' she cried, 'no!' She turned on him. 'You, you did it!'

'I did it, you crazy little fool? You think I could do that to a picture of you, a painting I prized? An expression, a look, captured for all time, gone for all time? And now destroyed as though it had never been? Who do you think could have done it? Monique, none other. She hated you, she said, would have liked to exterminate you, but this was the next best thing. I loved you, she told me, only a man in love with a girl could paint such a portrait.'

'Once,' said Karen, only half aware that she was speaking, 'I destroyed a painting of you, her painting of you. 'So,' she looked at him, 'it was revenge?'

'And jealousy.'

'Jealousy?' she cried. 'Jealous of me? You don't love me. Why should you? There's nothing about me to love.'

'Is there not?' His eyes slitted. 'Charles found something in you, didn't he?'

'Did he?' Her voice sounded infinitely weary. 'I wouldn't know. I'll never know.'

The look in those hard eyes changed and during the long silence that followed she tried to understand their expression. With a hopeless lift of the shoulders, she gave up and turned away.

'No wedding?' he asked softly.

'Didn't want a secondhand woman, he said.' She began to shiver. 'I've—I've been walking, just walking. Then I came to you.' She gripped her throat, unable to fight the tears. 'Glenn, what can I do?' She whispered, scarcely able to speak because she was afraid of the consequences of what she was about to say, 'What can I do about loving you? How can I stop?'

She closed her eyes and swayed on legs that seemed too weak to support her. She had put her future, her life itself, at his mercy. Would he rip through it, as Monique had done to the portrait?

Swiftly he approached, lifting her hands and putting the palms to his bare chest.

'Live with me,' he whispered. 'Be by my side whenever I need you, give me your mind and your body to turn to when I need comfort and understanding and love.'

She started to cry because what he was asking was impossible. She tried to pull away, shaking her head, turning it from side to side to hide the tears. He would never know the effort it cost her to say 'no'.

But he pulled her back so that she was pressed against him again. 'Let me tell you something. Since your engagement became official, I've been through hell. Apart from going to the school and carrying out my duties as a teacher, I became a recluse. I had to stand aside and watch part of me ‑' She frowned, opened her lips, trying to protest, but he closed them roughly with his. Then, lifting his head again, he went on, 'Part of me join up with another man, a man, especially, whose faults could be seen by anyone other than a woman who was in love with him. I convinced myself that you could not see those faults, and therefore loved him. Despite your saying you loved me, I came to the conclusion that you had said it without thought, but with only gratitude—for saving you from those two boys.'

'Oh, Glenn, I ‑'

'Let me finish. I faced myself at last, I looked into my soul, as I try to do with all those people whose portraits I paint. If I'd painted a self-portrait at that time, you would have hated it, plunged two pairs of scissors through it instead of one!'

Karen shook her head, but in her heart she knew she would never make him understand how her love for him embraced his faults as well as his virtues.

He seemed to become aware of the state of her and unbuttoned her coat, throwing it aside. He went away to find a towel and she stood there too stupefied to move or even to think.

He dried her and she let him, having no power left within her to withstand him. She was his, on whatever terms he chose to take her. He gave her a shirt and a pair of his jeans. They were too long and he crouched down and turned the hems at the ankles. Her clothes lay in a pile on the floor. He pulled her down beside him on the chaise-longue, took her in his arms and kissed every pulsing, throbbing part of her.

'Live here, with me, Karen,' he urged. 'I'll be your support, your partner, your lover. Whatever you want, I'll give you.'

Whatever she wanted? she thought sadly. A wedding ring? Children? A permanent relationship? She could not expect those things from this man. She had no illusions about him, no matter how much she loved him.

He lifted her face and brushed her lips with his. 'Whatever is mine will be yours.'

Tears shone in her eyes. 'Glenn,' she murmured thickly, 'I don't know. I just don't know.'

'You love me, my sweet. You told me. Was it true?'

'Of course it was true, but ‑' How could she go on? How could she ask for his love? She couldn't humble herself, plead with him to marry her.

'But ‑?' He waited, but she was silent. Impatient new, he pushed her back against the cushions and his lips and hands became possessive and demanding. He looked into her eyes and in his was an expression she did not understand. Never before had she seen such a look on a man's face. 'Let me show you,' he murmured, 'let me show you...'

Once again she knew the ecstasy of his lovemaking. But did he love her? She simply didn't know. He had not told her...

He pushed aside the shirt he had given her and his lips savoured the warm, soft flesh beneath. She moved with joy against him and his passion grew.

Later he said, lifting her left hand and stroking her engagement finger, 'I'll put a ring on it.'

A ring on it? Was that all? A sham marriage? She almost cried out. 'But, Glenn ‑'

'Would marrying me be so terrible?'

'Marry you?'

A gleam of anger hit his eyes. 'What else did you think I was proposing?'

The colour swept over her cheeks and she looked down, stroking the dark hair on his arms. 'You said once you had finished with marriage.'

'You changed my mind for me. You see, there are marriages and marriages. Last time, I was tricked— caught. This time I'm doing the catching.' He stroked her hair. 'I want to paint the children we shall have. I want to be able to tell the world, "They're ours!"'

'Oh, Glenn,' her eyes were brilliant with tears and joy, 'I want my children to be yours.'

Out of the silence that followed, he mused, 'I'll paint you. I'll paint you with child. I'll paint you loving me. I'll paint you hating me.'

She lifted her body against him, protesting. 'Never, Glenn. How could I hate you, loving you?'

'Simple.' He ran his finger down her cheek. 'The hate you've felt for me and which you've kept inside you all those years—that will stay in an air pocket in your mind. Sometimes, when we quarrel, and believe me, my darling, we will—I warn you, at times you'll find me almost unbearable to live with—you'll dig out a little of that hate and resentment and throw it in my face. And,' he smiled, 'you can be sure I'll throw it back.'

He kissed her slowly, thoroughly, with a possession she delighted in and to which, with unbelieving happiness, she abandoned herself. 'Then,' he went on, 'I'll make love to you like this,' he was whispering now, 'subjugating you and, sadist that I am,' he smiled to soften his words, 'have the joy of making you submit to me whether you want to or not,' with his lips he touched her eyelids, 'and see the love come sweeping back.'

'Glenn,' she clung to him, 'we're so different.'

'Wrong, sweet. We're both dreamers. I'm ah artist and inside you there's a poet aching to get out.' He buried his face in her neck. 'Written any good poems lately?' He held her away and looked her over, smiling. 'I lie here prostrated,' he quoted, 'a feeble figure on a bed, pondering poetry...'

'Glenn,' she accused delightedly, 'you took it, you took my poem out of the waste paper basket!'

'You're right,' he murmured, becoming interested in parts of her that had nothing to do with her intellect, 'so right. It's over there in my wallet. I know it by heart.'

A long time afterwards he murmured, 'It's too late for you to go home now, my love. You'll have to stay here. Do you understand?'

She understood, she said, her eyes shining with inexpressible happiness, she understood very well.

Tell me something, darling,' he said. 'Have you ever let a man ‑?'

Her finger closed his lips and she shook her head shyly. 'I shall be yours,' she whispered, 'entirely and completely yours.'

She knew he was glad by the way he looked at her. 'Part of me,' he whispered.

'Just like those two pictures you painted of me?' she asked, gazing earnestly into his eyes.

'Those,' he said softly, 'were part of my mind. You shall be part of my body, of my whole life.' He kissed her lingeringly. 'I shall be a demanding lover, my sweet. Don't always expect me to be considerate and kind, will you?'

'I wouldn't want you to be,' she whispered.

'Karen?' Dreamily, she looked up at him. 'When the time comes, I promise to be gentle.'

And when the time came, he was.