Читать книгу Honeymoon Baby - Susan Napier, Susan Napier - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

JENNIFER sat tensely upright on the soft couch, balancing her cup of tea on her lap while Raphael sprawled comfortably beside her, his jacket discarded, his long legs tucked under the coffee table and his arm extended along the back of the couch so that his fingers could idly play amongst the tousled waves at the nape of her stiff neck.

‘Yes, I flew into Auckland yesterday, shortly before they closed the airport because of the spreading volcanic smog,’ he was telling her mother. ‘I had been going to catch a connecting flight here, but when the airline said it had no idea when any of the local airports might be reopened I decided to hire a car and drive down. And I’m glad I did—it gave me a chance to see something of your wonderful countryside.’

He was certainly turning on the friendly charm, thought Jennifer sourly, brushing at the faint damp patches which still lingered on her trousers.

After being briefly disconcerted by Paula Scott’s words of welcome, Rafe had quickly summed up the situation and deftly turned the scenario to his advantage. And her mother had fallen for him like a ton of bricks, leaning forward in her wheelchair, her blue eyes sparkling with animation, as Rafe described his drive and his dramatic first view of the rumbling mountain with its ash column rising thousands of feet in the air, casually comparing it with some of the world’s other active volcanoes which he had witnessed in action.

Even Aunty Dot, an eccentric elderly spinster who generally treated all males with brusque impatience—being of the opinion that there were no ‘real men’ left in the world—was looking at him with grudging interest. An amateur naturalist and inveterate shoestring traveller, Dot was a semi-permanent resident of Beech House, living there between her long trips abroad, and anyone who brought news of fresh vistas for her to explore would be welcome grist to her mill.

‘Well, thank goodness you came when you did! That was what I wanted to tell you when I came in, Jenny,’ said Paula excitedly. ‘We just heard on the car radio that they’ve upgraded the volcano alert level to three. That’s on a scale of five, and it means they’re classing it as a hazardous local eruption,’ she explained in an aside to Rafe, before switching her attention back to her daughter.

‘They’ve closed the mountain completely, and with the ash cloud blowing this way they’re issuing a general warning for residents not to go outside without masks and to stay off the roads unless absolutely essential. Driving conditions are awful on the main road already, aren’t they, Dot? We had to crawl along and the headlights didn’t seem to help at all. Did you feel that earth tremor just as we arrived? That must have been another massive ash blast going up!’

Earth tremor? Taking a sip of her untasted tea, Jennifer instinctively glanced at Raphael and found him looking back, a knowing quirk at the corner of his mouth. He knew that neither of them had been aware of any external shocks. She remembered that moment of shattering temptation. A volcano had been erupting outside her window and she had still assumed it was Rafe who had made her world shudder!

Her cup rattled in her saucer as she replaced it with a trembling hand.

‘Careful, darling,’ said Rafe, leaning over to still the teetering crockery. He had already drunk half of his own tea, and eaten two of her mother’s feather-light scones while inveigling his way into her good graces.

Jennifer’s eyes told him she would like to dump the contents of her cup over his head. She wasn’t fooled by his amiable air of relaxation. He knew now why Susie had made her apparently inexplicable mistake and had accepted his assigned role as her husband purely for some nefarious purpose of his own as smoothly as if he had planned it for himself.

He was relishing seeing her hoist by her own petard, knowing that he now had her precisely where he wanted her—totally at his mercy. One word and the whole elaborate charade she had created to protect her sweet, unworldly mother would come tumbling down.

If she had been the crying type she would have burst into tears. But then she doubted that even a Niagara of tears would soften Rafe’s cynically hardened heart.

‘I’ve got it, darling,’ she responded through her beaming teeth.

‘It’s so lovely to see you two together,’ her mother sighed, getting back on the subject that her daughter had spent the last fraught fifteen minutes trying to obscure with meaningless small talk. ‘Poor Jenny has been missing you so dreadfully since she got home; she could hardly bear to talk about you—I had to base most of my impressions of you on her letters and phone calls before your marriage, and your photograph—so I hope you won’t mind if I’m rudely inquisitive.’

‘Of course not, Paula. If you don’t mind the reverse.’ Rafe’s hand massaged Jenny’s neck under her veil of hair, a possessive, lover-like caress that didn’t go unnoticed by the two older women. ‘Jenny and I didn’t seem to talk about anything other than ourselves when we were together. I just hope that photo was a flattering one...’ He trailed off invitingly.

As anticipated, Paula Scott glided innocently into the trap. ‘How could it not be? Having been so often in front of the camera when you were a model, I suppose it’s second nature to show it your best side—not to say your other sides haven’t turned out to be very attractive too,’ she added, looking him over with a twinkle. ‘Actually, it was your wedding photo.’

Rafe stiffened slightly, although his voice remained casually amused. ‘Oh? Which one was that?’

Jennifer considered herself lucky he hadn’t asked which wedding...

‘Would you like to see?’ Paula bent and felt in the tray under the seat of her wheelchair, pulling out her handbag. Her long battle against the debilitating effects of a back injury might have worn her frame thin, but not her valiant spirit. ‘I hope you don’t mind, Jenny—’ she smiled a trifle guiltily, her gamine grin making her look more like a girl than a fifty-five-year-old woman ‘—but I had a copy taken off for my wallet A mother has to have something to boast over!’

‘Of course I’d love to see it,’ said Rafe, with a gentle courtesy that Jennifer would have appreciated if she hadn’t known he was merely sucking up for more information.

‘I’m sure Rafe isn’t really interested—’

‘Oh, let him speak for himself, girl,’ Dot chipped in, creaking heavily in her chair as she scooped another scone off the plate. ‘The man has a mind of his own, doesn’t he? Maybe after three months apart he needs to remind himself that he’s married. I notice you don’t wear a wedding ring, young man.’

Jennifer nervously fingered the heavy gold band on her left hand. ‘Aunty Dot—’

‘I don’t believe in them, Mrs Grey,’ said Rafe without turning a hair.

Dot’s deep voice broke on a crack of laughter. ‘Neither do I, sonny, neither do I. Never could abide a man wearing jewellery. Namby-pamby, I call it. And you may as well call me Dot, seeing as we’re as near as dammit related. Jenny calls me Aunty, but I’m really just an old friend of the family.’

‘A very valued friend, I’m sure, Dot.’

This time Rafe’s smoothness backfired on him. ‘No need to butter me up, young man. I’ve already decided you’ll do. Jennifer’s always had a good head on her shoulders. If she chose you then that’s good enough reason for me to like you.’

‘Thank you,’ Rafe chuckled, proving that unlike his father he had no problems admitting his own faults. ‘I suppose a backhanded compliment is better than an insincere one.’

‘Here you are!’ Jennifer’s mother finally produced the result of her rummaging in her untidy bag.

Jennifer had one more lame attempt at deflecting the inevitable. ‘He probably already has that print anyway—’

‘We ex-models are terribly vain; we can never resist drooling over shots of ourselves,’ Rafe interrupted her coolly, half rising to take the slim leather pocketbook from Paula’s deceptively fragile fingers. He settled back beside his rigid companion and inspected the small coloured photograph displayed under the plastic window.

‘Oh, yes, I remember that moment very vividly,’ he murmured, causing Jennifer to shift uneasily on the cushions and rub her neck, which strangely seemed to still feel his phantom fingers. She didn’t have to look to know what Rafe was seeing: a study in deception.

In deference to Sebastian’s insistence that their wedding appear as normal as possible, to subvert any potential future threat to the legality of Jennifer’s position, she had worn an expensive white silk suit, paid for by Sebastian, and had carried an exquisite bouquet of white roses and baby’s breath, and afterwards they had posed for the register office photographer. She had been wearing her contact lenses, and a visit from a hairstylist and make-up expert had prettied her unconventional features, but it was the secret which she happily carried inside her which had made her truly bloom like a genuine bride.

To Jennifer’s extreme discomfort, and Sebastian’s startled satisfaction, Rafe had turned up to hear them exchange their brief vows—the only one of the extended family to attend. Although he had refused to act as a formal witness, his father had insisted on him joining them for a photograph. He had broken off one of Jennifer’s white roses and thrust it through the buttonhole on the lapel of his son’s grey suit, lining them up with Jennifer in the middle.

In hindsight she could appreciate the irony of the pose, but at the time only Sebastian had known that the man on the other side of his wife was in fact the true father of her child. As far as Jennifer had been aware, her baby’s father was irrelevant, a number on the label of an anonymous test tube of frozen sperm, chosen from hundreds of others. The anonymity was a necessary part of general fertility programmes, she had understood, to prevent genetic parents launching bids to reclaim the offspring created from the sperm or eggs they had previously donated...or birth parents trying to sue donors for maintenance!

While in the originally posed photograph she and Rafe had been wearing identical fake smiles, a few seconds later the accidental triggering of the photographer’s remote control had caught an informal shot of Sebastian nudging Jennifer into accepting Rafe’s polite kiss on her cheek. Frozen on film in embarrassed mid-stumble, she had been pressing her bouquet-filled hand against Rafe’s dark jacket to steady herself, and in profile it seemed as if she was looking up at him, pink-cheeked and adoring, while the three-quarter angle of his head showed clearly his smiling intent to kiss her as his arm encircled her silk-clad waist.

What didn’t show up in the photograph was the angry pride in Jennifer’s eyes and the sardonic contempt behind Rafe’s teasing smile...and the gaunt, elderly groom, neatly excised from the negative she had taken to the camera shop to be reprinted.

‘Jenny has a larger, framed version up in her bedroom,’ said Paula fondly, wheeling over to retrieve her wallet. ‘Since all our living areas are used by our guests, we like to keep our private things to ourselves.’ She looked down at the photo and smiled. ‘I thought this looked so lively, full of warmth and fun. It was such a relief to know that Jennifer had found someone wonderful—and for it to be Sebastian’s son of all people! Your father was such a pleasant guest, so helpful and undemanding.’

Jennifer bit back a nervous giggle when she saw Rafe’s eyes widen at this description of his exacting, imperious father.

‘Mum always sees the best in everyone,’ she said, obliquely warning him against trying to shatter her mother’s rosy illusions.

‘A rare and admirable quality,’ Rafe murmured, looking thoughtfully from Jennifer to her mother, obviously racking up more evidence for the prosecution. ‘Of course, people often act quite differently from their usual selves when they escape the pressures of their normal environment. Some of them see it as an excuse to go wild and do dangerous things that they’d never dream of doing at home...and later live to bitterly regret it.’

Jennifer knew the message was explicitly aimed at her, but as usual Paula took the words at face value.

‘Oh, your father came here for the peace and quiet we could provide, not to go adventuring. But he was so very exhausted by the time he got to our section of his holiday that I was rather worried for him. Thank goodness Jenny was on hand, with her home-nursing experience, because Sebastian refused to see a doctor or alter his plans for the rest of his trip. I encouraged her, you know, to accept his offer to accompany him back to England after he said he didn’t like the idea of employing a total stranger. I thought the travel would be a good chance for Jenny to broaden her mind a little—she’d never been overseas before...’

From the cynical heft of an eyebrow Jenny could see Rafe thinking that she had been plenty broad-minded by the time she had married his father.

‘I was so sorry when she arrived back and told me that he had died,’ Paula continued. ‘You have my very deepest sympathy, Rafe. But at least he had the chance to see you happy first,’ she added, always ready to stress the positive. ‘Jenny never said, but I supposed his being in such a precarious state of health was the reason why everything happened in such a rush between the two of you...’ She paused delicately.

‘Thank you,’ said Rafe in simple acceptance of her sympathy, warmed, as people usually were, by Paula’s natural empathy. ‘But the rushing part was just as much Jenny’s idea. Your daughter is one determined lady once she’s made up her mind about something.’

Jennifer almost choked on her tea. A lady was the last thing that he considered her to be! Coughing, she let Rafe whisk her cup and saucer out of her hands and pat her on the back with what she felt was unnecessary firmness.

‘I know. She was very stubborn as a girl,’ said Paula. ‘And very quiet. She never seemed to need a lot of friends. Always daydreaming and scribbling and inventing her own private games with her own rules that nobody else could follow.’

‘She hasn’t changed much then,’ said Rafe, and the tiny blade of sharpness concealed in his words made a small nick in his carefully presented image of a totally besotted husband.

‘I expect you still have a lot to learn about each other,’ Paula said mildly. ‘It was a pity you had to dash off up the Amazon, Rafe, so soon after the wedding, and your father’s death, but Jenny said that invitations to join an expedition like that are few and far between, and you had to grab the opportunity while it was offered. She said it had been a secret dream of yours for years to help the indigenous peoples of the rainforest, and she didn’t want you to sacrifice it for her sake...’

Now it was Rafe’s turn to choke, on nothing more than his own astounded tongue. ‘The Amazon?’

‘She said you’d be away at least four months, possibly six. I hope nothing went wrong that you’re back early? Jenny said it could be dangerous working so far out of contact with civilisation.’ Paula’s head tilted in motherly concern.

‘Fascinating place, the Amazon,’ commented Dot, washing down the last of her scone with the dregs of her tea. ‘Been there myself a few times. Marvellous specimens. Going to go back some day, I hope. Like to talk about it with you some time.’

‘Uh, well, I...’ It was the first time Jennifer had ever seen Raphael Jordan speechless, but unfortunately she couldn’t afford to enjoy the sight of him floundering in his own witlessness.

‘He just got a little unexpected R&R,’ she said hurriedly. ‘He had to catch all sorts of odd flights to get here, and now he has virtually to go straight back to be able to rejoin the team in time. Don’t you, Rafe?’

He looked at her, her heavy-handed emphasis wiping the stunned glaze from his green eyes, replacing it with a wicked admiration that made her creamy pale cheeks pinken. How she wished she had never embarked on this agony of deceit!

She nervously brushed non-existent crumbs from her lap, and her hand touched her stomach and stilled, acknowledging that she was fiercely glad her wish could never be granted. She had what she wanted and nobody, nobody, was going to take it away!

Rafe folded his arms over his chest, the thick cabling on his sweater pulling tight over his shoulders, letting his silence stretch until Jennifer was on the verge of panic before he drawled, ‘Actually, darling, I can take longer if I like. Everything’s been going so well we’ve pretty much done what we originally set out to do...and various members of the team are already splitting off to take up other projects. It won’t be a problem if I send a message that I’ve decided not to return...’

‘I thought there was no way to get communications in or out of your area of the rainforest?’ said Paula innocently.

Rafe pursed his lips to disguise his amusement. Jennifer had thought of everything.

‘Before, no—but I made special arrangements at every step along the way on my trip out,’ he replied with bland aplomb.

‘Well, that’s wonderful news!’ Paula beamed. ‘Isn’t it, Jenny?’

Her mother’s joyful exclamation was punctuated by a low rumble and a shimmer of windows in their wooden frames. Mount Ruapehu obviously had the same opinion as Jennifer.

Dot got up and crossed to the glass doors, peering towards the mountain through a fine haze of grey powder interspersed with twirling, fingernail-sized ash flakes.

‘It’s pretty black up over there now,’ she said. ‘There’s hardly a glimpse of clear sky left. I bet the colour of that plume means most of the crater lake has gone. We could see some real pyrotechnics soon.’

She rapped at the dust-coated glass with a stubby finger. ‘I hope the wind changes again, or I’m going to lose some of the plants to this damned ash. I’ve covered the most delicate ones, but at this time of the year they need as much sunlight as they can get.’

In spite of the fact that she travelled for about four months of every year, Dot had put herself in charge of the flower and vegetable gardens, and whenever she was in residence she worked with a passion amongst her beloved plants and planned all the new plantings. Over the years she had built up the grounds of Beech House to the point where they were regularly featured in ‘open gardens’ tours during local festivals.

Rafe went to join her at the window, the seams of his close-fitting jeans whitening as he stepped across Jennifer’s legs, dragging her unwilling attention to his taut backside as he moved away. To her chagrin, her mother caught her looking and grinned, miming a silent whistle.

Jennifer smiled weakly in return as she began stacking the tea things on the tray. If her mother had never met her ‘husband’, the discreet long-distance ‘divorce’ that she had been planning to blame on their extended separation could have been achieved with minimum fuss. Now it would be that much more difficult.

‘Are we likely to be in any danger at this distance?’ she heard Rafe ask Dot.

‘Not from molten material. In an eruption the size they’re predicting the danger zone for that is only a few kilometres.’ Geology was another of Dot’s hobbies. ‘But the radio said that there’d already been several big lahars through the ski fields, and once the mud-flows reach the river systems they can cause havoc downstream. There was a big train-wreck in ’53, when a rail bridge over the Whangaehu River got washed away and a hundred and fifty people were killed. But our main problem will probably just be the ash flying around and clogging things up, and then you get water shortages when people try to clean it up. And it can be toxic when it’s breathed in, of course, so we’d better make sure the animals come inside...’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Paula. ‘Do you want to put a canvas over your car, Rafe? We have some spare covers in the garage that we bought after last year’s big blow. I know it’s only a rental, but heaven knows what this dust might do if it gets into the engine.’

Jennifer stopped what she was doing, aghast at the tacit invitation contained in the suggestion, but before she could think of an objection Rafe turned from the darkening view and strolled back to smile down at his eager hostess.

‘I suppose that would be a good idea, but I don’t want to impose, Paula.’ His diffidence was a beautifully calculated pre-emptive strike. ‘I know you weren’t expecting me, and Susie told me when I arrived that you had a full complement of guests. Actually, since I wasn’t quite sure of the set-up here, or what Jennifer’s immediate plans were, I had made a reservation at a hotel...’

‘Rafe! Of course you’ll stay here with us!’ Paula was visibly shocked by his offer. ‘We always have room for family, no matter how full we are. Jenny has a lovely big bedroom which takes up the whole of the upstairs, with en suite bathroom and outside access via the balcony, so you can both have tons of privacy. Goodness!’ she laughed, as the loaded tea tray crashed back down onto the coffee table. ‘Jenny would never forgive me if I tried to chase you away—look at her face, she’s horrified at the very thought!’

Rafe knew full well what she was horrified by, and it wasn’t the thought of their separation.