Hold Back the Dark Page 10

  Megan was convinced that Nicolas Dargan was her lover, although surely a man could set out to buy a statue with a woman who was an adviser or an employee, there didn’t have to be a personal connection. But Nicolas Dargan had a powerful sexual charisma, and Clarry had not denied anything, and Megan was a romantic.

  She wished Megan had been right, but it had been rather a splendid day. She had enjoyed all of it, and now she was tired and huddling herself warm, and the storm was not going to keep her awake.

  She left the bedside lamp on and snuggled right down, but she could still hear the wind. There must have been storms in the ironmaster’s time, but he would have built his house walls thick with shutters at the windows, and gardeners to repair the damage in the garden. Now the stone sisters were alone in the wind and the rain, and so were the beasts. It must have been a night like this when the griffin was toppled.

  Clarry slept heavily at first under the muffling bedclothes, but when she began to dream the wind played its part. It took her up into the garden, and there it was—the cries of the beasts. Not really frightening, just a background chorus to her dream, where she was walking through a misty world of vague shapes.

  But suddenly the mist turned black, and she woke into a nightmare of darkness where there was no light and she was as disorientated as if she had fallen into a pit and was still falling. A terror was on her, the mindless panic. She hugged herself, swaying like an autistic child, cold sweat trickling down her body, screaming silently.

  Then she heard him, ‘Clarry, are you all right?’ and her, ‘No,’ was a whimper, but now there were arms around her and sanity was flowing back into her.

  For a little while she couldn’t speak at all, and then she could hardly speak for the sobs that choked her. ‘I’m sorry—this is so stupid. But I’m afraid of the dark.’

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  ‘How do you know?’ Her face was pressed against him. She could smell the aftershave or the scent of his skin, and it was like gulping in life. ‘Nobody knows.’

  ‘Downstairs when the lights went out, and it made sense of the priest’s hole.’

  It made no sense to Clarry. Her hair felt cropped and she felt so thin that her bones must be rattling in his arms. She said jerkily, ‘Only since the accident. Darkness is like it was then. Darkness is like dying.’

  ‘Clarry,’ he said her name very quietly, and she was safe now, answering to her name, coming back but still rigid and aching with tension.

  ‘It’s all right, believe me,’ he said. He stroked the back of her neck, gently and evenly, undid the buttons and massaged her shoulders, and as the knotted muscles unravelled she gave a little moan of pleasure and relief. I know how a cat feels now, she thought; nobody ever stroked me like this before.

  When Nicolas brushed back the hair that was sticking to her forehead she said, trying to smile, ‘It’s growing again.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘My hair. Sometimes it feels short and jagged, the way it was. I wasn’t unconscious then, just weak and sick, but I can shake my head now—’ she let her head fall back so that her hair spilled over his arm ‘—and it’s all right. I do have longish hair, don’t I?’

  ‘Long and strong, and a beautiful colour,’ he assured her.

  ‘Good, that’s a relief.’ She was gathering her wits, although it was still an effort to sound rational. ‘This is a power failure, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. The landing light went out too. I’ll get you a candle or a lamp.’

  That would mean rousing the household. As he moved to stand up she said, ‘Don’t do that, don’t bother them.’ He was standing by the bed now, and she put a hand on his arm. ‘I’ve got a torch in my bag somewhere—I always carry a torch. But—would you stay a little longer?’ He hesitated and she said, ‘Please,’ and he said,

  ‘Of course.’ She knew Nicolas was not interpreting this as an invitation to spend the night with her. To him she was a disturbed friend who still needed reassurance, and she was just that, needing someone to talk to, to hold on to for a while although the nightmare was over. She was thinking no further, but she was desperate to keep him here.

  She moved along in the bed and he sat down, feet up on the coverlet as he must have done before. She wanted to say something about the chilliness of the room. Although she had been sweating with fear only minutes ago it was cold. She could see now that he was naked to the waist, and he would have been warmer under the quilt at least. But when she had touched him he had not felt cold, and there was no casual way of asking, ‘Why don’t you get into my bed?’

  She said, ‘If I didn’t panic I’d remember you can see in the dark if you wait.’ She could make out the shapes of furniture now and where the window was behind the curtains. She could see him clear and close, and he put an arm around her again as she explained, ‘It’s sudden darkness that throws me, and sudden and total darkness doesn’t often happen, thank goodness. That’s why nobody knows about this, not even Danny. Don’t tell Danny.’

  ‘Why not?’ and she launched fervently into her reasons.

  ‘Because he’s gone through enough over me. He was there, every day. He slept by the phone when he wasn’t by my bed, and as soon as they let him he took me home with him. I needed nursing, and he paid for everything I needed. And when I started my business he worked with me, although he’d earned his retirement and he could have been taking it easy, and he found the money out of his savings to back me. It’s thanks to him that I’ve got a home and a business, but he is an old man and I don’t want him to start worrying if he ought to be getting me to a psychiatrist.’

  She was in dead earnest, but Nicolas was smiling. ‘What would a psychiatrist do for you that I can’t do?’ and that made her smile too.

  ‘Let me talk.’

  ‘And what are you doing now?’

  Telling more than she would have told anyone else, as if she believed that nobody else could make things as right as this man could. He had pulled her out of the pit tonight. Left alone she would have come round shattered, with that awful fear in her mind that some brain cell somewhere had been damaged and this was a foretaste of madness. She drew a long shaking breath and said, ‘It’s a crazy way to carry on, isn’t it? Am I crazy?’

  ‘You’re lucky,’ he said. ‘You could have been paralysed, you could have been brain-damaged, but you came out of a five weeks’ coma with just one small phobia.’

  A phobia, that was all it was; a hangover that she would grow out of in time. If it happened again she would not lose control of her mind, she would keep telling herself, I’m not dying, I’m alive and I have everything to live for. I’m lucky.

  She said, ‘You make a good psychiatrist—I think I’m cured.’ They both knew she was not, but from now on there would be a glimmer of light in the darkness.

  ‘You’re a good patient,’ said Nicolas. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You told me I owed you.’ She had said that outside the maze that first night, for keeping Nigel away from her. ‘I do feel some responsibility for your accident,’ he said. ‘You were riding one of my horses.’

  She had thought they were Nigel’s horses, not that that mattered, and she quite liked the idea of Nicolas feeling some responsibility for her. She said, ‘She was a lovely horse.’

  She remembered how the chestnut roan had gleamed in the sunshine, and she was glad, weeks later when she could ask, to learn that the horse wasn’t hurt. It had reared when a car backfired, thrown Clarry against a wall, and raced off down a high street, coming to a halt when someone grabbed the trailing reins.

  Now she asked, ‘Do you still have her?’

  ‘Yes. She’s a safer mount now. She wasn’t fully trained in traffic when he took you out. You were an inexperienced rider and you shouldn’t have been on her.’

  She said, smiling, ‘He said she matched my hair.’

  ‘It was the only way you were a match for her in those days,’ Nicolas said drily.


  Clarry could remember nothing of that day beyond the blossom on the cherry trees when they came off the bridle path into the village, but she felt that if Nicolas Dargan had been her companion she would have been safe. ‘I wouldn’t be a match now,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t done much riding before, and I’ve never been on a horse since.’

  ‘That’s another thing, then.’

  ‘Huh?’ she queried.

  ‘You’re scared of the dark and you’re scared of horses, since the accident. If we deal with them you’ll be good as new.’ He was joking, and so was she.

  ‘Sure I will. Then I’ll only have to dye my white streak and I can forget it ever happened.’

  If the horse had not thrown her she might have been with Nigel now, lying somewhere in the darkness beside him with a wedding ring on her finger, which would have been wrong, because she had never wanted Nigel as much as she wanted Nicolas Dargan. She had thought it was love with Nigel. What it was for Nicolas she didn’t really know, but she couldn’t stop herself turning towards him, the bedclothes slipping from her as her arms reached up and her hands clasped behind his head to draw him against her.

  Leaning over her, he looked down. ‘What are you wearing? Where did you get that?’

  She had wanted his mouth on hers, she had wanted him covering all of her, but his smile was like a caress and she could feel the warmth of him inside her so that the closeness was almost a lovemaking.

  ‘Megan lent it to me,’ she told him. Even with the buttons undone and one shoulder bared it looked prim and proper. ‘I see nobody lent you anything.’ She put on a mournful face, although the nightgear of the Thomas menfolk wouldn’t have covered the half of it.

  ‘I wasn’t offered a water bottle either,’ he said. Her bottle was down between the sheets somewhere.

  She stretched a leg and wobbled it and suggested, ‘They couldn’t have thought you needed warming up—Megan certainly didn’t.’

  ‘I’d gathered that,’ said Nicolas drily. ‘The woman’s an incurable romantic.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with that, she has the nightdress for it too. She gave me a choice, this and that one over there.’ Draped over a chair, the shell-pink nightgown was a shimmer in the shadows. ‘She wore that on her honeymoon.’

  He was impressed. ‘She offered you the heirloom?’

  ‘Sort of. Although this was a second honeymoon, this time last year when Bryn took her to Paris.’

  ‘I hope it was warmer there than it is here!’

  Clarry said sweetly, ‘It’s warmer here, under the bedclothes,’ and he laughed.

  ‘I’m sure it is, but that could lead to complications.’

  He was not laughing at her, she felt that he never would. ‘I don’t care,’ she said.

  ‘I do. And so would you in the morning. Now, where’s that torch?’ He got up, but it was not a drawing away, the bond still held between them.

  ‘I don’t need it,’ said Clarry. ‘I can see now.’

  Nicolas drew back the curtains so that a grey light filtered through the windows. ‘Then get some sleep,’ he said, and she could see him clearly. She could have shut her eyes and still seen him.

  ‘Ah, well,’ she said, ‘I got the griffin.’

  ‘And when you ask Danny Hill to repair the wing you’ll be able to look him straight in the eye and assure him it didn’t cost you a thing.’

  If Danny could see her now he wouldn’t know her. ‘Because you’re handing me back in pristine condition,’ she quoted gaily. ‘Pure and uncorrupted.’

  He laughed again, and so did she as the door closed behind him. Then softly to herself sliding down into the bed, because she knew with a clairvoyant certainty that Nicolas Dargan would be her lover, because in some strange way he already was.

  CHAPTER SIX

  NO, I wouldn’t have regretted it in the morning, Clarry thought, waking next morning alone in her bed. The power must still be off. The bedside lamp gave no light and she had to peer closely at her watch to see that the time was a quarter to eight.

  The windowpanes were wet but rain no longer lashed them, and the gale-force winds had dropped. When a pale dawn was breaking she had heard voices, doors closing and a dog barking, and had known that the men were going up into the hills searching for the sheep. She had gone to sleep again, but now it was high time she was up and about.

  As she moved to push back the bedclothes there was a tap on the door and Megan appeared carrying a tray. ‘Cup of tea?’ she said brightly. ‘Mr Dargan said not to wake you before.’

  ‘He’s up, is he?’ queried Clarry.

  ‘Been down some time, on that phone of his in the car.’ Megan put the tray on the bedside table. ‘Power’s still off, mind your step on the stairs,’ and with another smile and a nod she tripped out again.

  Clarry poured herself tea with a splash of milk, and a heaped spoonful of sugar—she was going to need her energy today. She took the cup into the bathroom because if Nicolas was downstairs, making phone calls, he would be ready to leave.

  Her reflection in the mirror over the washbasin was wan. The white walls and the chill in the air drained her of colour so that she looked as washed out as the landscape glimpsed through the window. Even her dark red hair seemed duller than usual. She really was very ordinary. She remembered saying to Paul Burnley, ‘I’m not conceited enough to go after one his size,’ but, however you looked at it, she had propositioned Nicolas Dargan last night and he had turned her down.

  This morning her confidence was ebbing away, and she went downstairs not knowing how she was going to face him. She would try to be natural and relaxed, but she could find herself blushing and stammering, and even when her hand was on the latch of the kitchen door she still held back for a few more seconds.

  Then she opened the door, and all the warmth of the house seemed to be in the kitchen. An oil lamp burned on the table. Megan Thomas was talking and Nicolas was listening to her, sitting with a cup of coffee before him. Megan stopped talking, and Nicolas smiled at Clarry, and again she had this feeling that he reached out and she homed in to him.

  ‘Sleep well?’ he asked.

  ‘Very well, thank you, and you?’

  ‘Of course.’ They smiled at each other as she sat down beside him, and Clarry knew that Megan would be smiling too; and Megan was nearly right, for a little while last night they had shared that bed in Clarry’s room.

  ‘How about a nice cooked breakfast?’ Megan suggested.

  The power lines might be down, but the stove gave a good heat and Clarry would have liked to linger, half listening to Megan’s prattle, sitting by Nicolas and basking in the warmth of his male sensuality. But she knew that was out of the question, so she said, ‘Just tea or coffee for me, please.’

  ‘I can recommend the oatcakes,’ he said, and there was a plate of still warm oatcakes on the table with butter and honey. He drained his cup. ‘I’m expecting a call, I’ll see you out in the car.’

  Now Megan poured her a coffee and she buttered herself an oatcake, and swallowed and gulped and said how much she had enjoyed her brief stay.

  ‘Pity you can’t make it longer,’ said Megan, ‘but he’s a busy man, isn’t he? Big name, Bryn was telling me.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Clarry, and a small sigh escaped her before she could check it.

  Outside the outlook was miserable. The storm was played out, but there was still a drizzle of rain and the wind kept up a perpetual sighing. Megan looked up to the hills where her menfolk were shepherding their flock, and Clarry looked across at the car where Nicolas was still on the phone.

  When they reached the car the griffin was a sinister shape wrapped in sacking, and Megan said, ‘I still can’t think why you picked him.’

  ‘Picked who?’ asked Clarry, pretending not to understand, and for the moment Megan was flustered.

  Then Clarry grinned and Megan said, ‘Get along, with you, you know I wasn’t meaning Mr Dargan.’

  Nicolas finished his phone call and leaned a
cross to open the door for her, and Clarry slid into the seat beside him. He thanked Megan, and she said she wished all her guests were as agreeable or anywhere near as generous. By which Clarry reckoned that Megan had been well satisfied when the account was settled, and it had been almost like making new friends.

  Megan waved them goodbye, hoping to see them again, but Clarry doubted if Nicolas would be returning or that he ever stayed in a bed-and-breakfast. Perhaps she might come back herself some time. Alone, or with a friend who was not Nicolas Dargan. But if she did she would remember him, and if she woke in the night in one of those bedrooms she would lie there aching to hear him say, ‘Clarry, are you all right?’

  She would not be all right. She would be missing him so badly that she could never come here again without him. So it was a real goodbye to Megan Thomas who stood at the five-barred gate as long as she could see the car or Clarry could see her.

  The farmhouse and the ironmaster’s garden could all have been a dream, except for the griffin. He was real and solid, and when she stopped waving at Megan Clarry stretched over to touch the sacking, feeling the rock beneath. ‘He’s still here,’ she said.

  ‘It’s unlikely anyone would be out last night hijacking him,’ said Nicolas, ‘and he wouldn’t get far himself on one wing.’

  He was joking, and she smiled, but it had been magical for her, although she couldn’t expect him to understand.

  The first tree down would have soon presented a problem if they had set off last night. It had crashed, uprooted, across the road just below the row of houses. A couple of men were sawing off branches, and going slowly and carefully they managed to get past, but in the darkness, at the height of the storm, that might not have been possible. Even if Mansell Thomas had not made a last phone call they would probably have been turning here and driving back to the farmhouse.

  There were signs of storm on the road to the market town, trees and hedges blown all ways, tiles gone from roofs, the chimneystack of one cottage brought down in a tumble of bricks. A mile or so before the town the damage slackened off and there was less evidence of last night, although the town itself was dark; the power cuts had reached here. Illumination in houses and shops was from lamps and generators, and policemen guided traffic where warning lights should have been.