Love in the Valley Page 2

  He released her, chanting mournfully:

  ‘ “I burne and cruell you, in vaine

  Hope to quench me with disdaine.” ‘

  Julia was unimpressed, having heard him use exactly the same quotation before an audience of several hundred a few weeks before. Still, he did have a beautiful way with words. In spite of her striving to be practical, Julia possessed a strong streak of romanticism that was constantly getting in the way. Perhaps that was why she hadn’t fallen in love with Richard, he was too free with something she considered should be private and special between two people.

  ‘Oh well,’ he wasn’t discouraged. ‘I’ll have you at my mercy in August.’

  ‘You and the rest of the family,’ Julia pointed out.

  ‘Mmmm.’ He paused, his hand on the door-knob. ‘Have you seen Steve lately?’

  Julia shook her head and he frowned. ‘Nor have I, not since before his Australian tour. If it wasn’t so silly I’d say he was trying to avoid me. He didn’t look too wonderful.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Julia tried to remember the last time she had seen his twin perform. It was on a local television show. The group, Hard Times, was excellent, but it was Steve’s distinctive voice as a lead singer that lifted them into chart-topping ranks. It had a harsh, gravelly quality, very attractive, very sexy. Julia had thought Steve looked thin and his red hair had accentuated his pallor, but it was a look he had cultivated.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Richard answered. ‘I don’t think he was looking forward to the tour, for one thing, although he didn’t say so. He and the group have been pretty constantly on the road for a couple of years now, and there’s been a bit of disagreement. Steve seemed very edgy … uptight.’

  ‘Maybe a month of peace and quiet in Coromandel is just what he needs, then,’ said Julia, as they walked down the rain-slick driveway to her car. To her surprise, Richard, after a moment, began to laugh.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ he explained, seeing her puzzlement, ‘peace and quiet … that’s one thing a certain member of the family is going to find elusive down there.’

  ‘You mean your father, with his writing?’

  ‘No, no …’ Richard looked furtively over his shoulder. ‘Hugh!’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Richard was grinning widely. ‘He’s going to be down at Craemar with the rest of us.’

  ‘But Connie said he wouldn’t be. I thought he didn’t like family get-togethers.’

  ‘He doesn’t know! He’s been over in America doing some legal research. He doesn’t know that Mother darling, in her infinite wisdom, has disorganised us all with her plans. He’s writing this legal text-book you see, for the university—he lectures there sometimes—and he’s decided to do it all in one go, without distractions … at Craemar. He’s burnt his boats quite thoroughly by letting his apartment to a visiting American professor and his family and he won’t be able to come back up to the town house because Connie’s having the decorators in with a vengeance while we’re away. What a gory, glorious scene it’s going to be!’

  Julia, usually attuned to Richard’s sense of humour, and tolerant of his practical jokes, was at a loss. ‘I don’t see what’s so funny.’

  ‘You don’t know Hugh! Individually he likes us, but he needs a good few months’ notice to psyche himself up to endure the family en masse. Our Hugh is not a social animal, why, even at Christmas he can only stand us for a few days.’

  ‘Maybe he gets enough excitement in his work,’ said Julia, doubtful of this unlikely sounding Marlow. ‘Lawyers must have to socialise with every man and his dog.’

  ‘Ah, but then he’s not your kind of legal eagle, darling,’ Richard explained with a grin. ‘He’s not a blood and guts and “where were you on the night of the thirty-first” lawyer. He’s a party-of-the-first-part lawyer, a dry-as-dust commercial lawyer. Nothing so untidy and unreliable as human emotion for our Hugh.’

  Julia felt a tug of curiosity. ‘Don’t you like him?’

  ‘Of course I like him … love him come to that. He’s one of us, don’t mistake me. When we were kids he was the story-teller, the adjudicator in all our fights, and being so much older than the rest of us we were a bit in awe of him. That was where the rot started, I think. We respected his privacy too much, let him retreat to the fringes of our lives as we grew older, instead of getting to know him better. And now he’s out of reach … almost. When I get the chance I like to remind him who he is and what he’s part of. I can’t resist giving him the occasional provocative prod—and August will be more than that, it’ll be a whacking great thump over the head!’

  ‘You’re really enjoying this aren’t you?’ murmured Julia, unable to get a clear picture of the man Richard was describing. He sounded rather dull … commercial law, for goodness sake! Julia had always pictured him as a kind of red-headed Perry Mason in the past, now she hastily toned it down. But a dull Marlow? It was a contradiction in terms.

  ‘Loving every delicious moment,’ admitted Richard unrepentantly. ‘I can’t wait to see his impotent squirming when Connie gets hold of him. She’ll not let him escape our clutches—he may be impatient of the rest of us, but Connie he won’t refuse, not categorically anyway. I was over at his place, you know, when this American professor phoned and let the cat out of the bag. Hugh swore me to eternal silence so silent I shall remain! I nearly killed myself driving home, I was laughing so hard.’

  He was still laughing as Julia drove away and she briefly entertained the thought that it might be something of a strain to survive Richard’s practical jokes day in, day out. Poor Hugh. She hoped he was equal to the shock.

  CHAPTER TWO

  OVER the weeks leading up to and following Phillip’s departure, Julia saw quite a lot of Richard Marlow. Declaring himself in need of intelligent female companionship he set himself the task of taking over Julia’s social life. He was great company, if a trifle exhausting and his presence was like a blast of fresh air in Julia’s life. If now and then he lapsed into moodiness she put it down to actor’s temperament. Had it been any other man, she might have thought that the desire for her constant company was a sign that he was beginning to get serious. But Richard never got serious about any women.

  When he told her that he was going down to Craemar the weekend before Julia, baching it for a few days, her impulsive generosity surfaced and she promised to make up one of her special hampers for him. His instant acceptance left her with the feeling that her too-ready sympathies had been very cleverly manipulated.

  When he collected his bounty on the Friday, Richard was wildly over-effusive with his thanks, handing over a fistful of dollars to cover her expenses and cheerfully informing her that his chief duty was to get to Craemar before his elder brother.

  ‘I want to be there when The Man meets his fate!’ he cried as the dusty MG took off with a callous roar, scattering gravel from Phillip’s well-raked driveway as he took the curve at speed. Really, he was a shocking driver, thought Julia as she prepared for her own journey. She was spending the weekend with her parents at Ngatea, a handy stop-over on the way to Craemar.

  Julia had lived independently of her parents ever since she had left New Zealand at eighteen to further her experience in Europe. But her family background had been a happy and secure one and she had always kept in close touch, wherever her life took her.

  Arriving at Ngatea in time for morning tea, Julia found herself subjected to the usual parental interrogation about her health and welfare, and, naturally, her current lack of a steady boyfriend.

  ‘When I think of all those nice boys you used to bring home,’ her mother sighed reminiscently, ‘and all those interesting European men you wrote home about … wasn’t there even one …?’

  ‘Nope.’ Julia helped herself to another piece of shortbread, wishing absently that she had inherited her mother’s fine-boned figure. Instead she had her father’s sturdy genes. She was the same height as her mother, but more generously endowed in all
directions. As a teenager she had agonised about the embarrassing lushness of her lines, compared to the coltish modesty of her schoolmates’.

  ‘I don’t suppose you and Richard Marlow …?’ Nan Fry began wistfully.

  ‘Nope.’ Julia rolled her eyes at her father, and he came obligingly to the rescue.

  ‘Oh, leave her alone, Nan. Give her a few years yet. Remember, we didn’t meet until we were thirty. I’d rather Julia was too much discriminating than too little.’

  Was she too discriminating? Julia wondered that night as she settled into the familiar sag of her narrow bed. Her friends all seemed to fall in and out of love at the drop of a hat. She was sure none of them were still virgins.

  The trouble was that she had never been severely tempted, not even by some of the suave operators she had met in Europe. She had never yet met a man who made her breathless, who made her heart pound, who thrilled her with his touch, the kind of unmistakable signs that her friends talked about. Oh, she had had great fun with a number of men—laughed, talked, petted a little, but had never felt any compelling curiosity to carry it further. She couldn’t believe that all there was to love was liking someone enough to fall into bed with them.

  Julia’s weekend passed with leisured slowness, interrupted only by the noisy arrival of her brother, Ben, on his motorcycle. Skinny, bearded, and going through a laconic phase, he mellowed with the roast lamb, sloughing the veneer currently favoured by his university peers.

  ‘How’s life, Julia Jinx?’ he asked, through a mouthful of roast potato.

  ‘She offered to mow the lawns yesterday afternoon,’ Edward Fry told him tolerantly.

  ‘Don’t tell me … the engine blew up!’

  ‘Close,’ his father grinned. ‘A wheel fell off.’

  Ben gave a shout of laughter and Julia glared at him. Her hopelessness with things mechanical was a family joke. Automatic washing machines, copiers, vacuum cleaners and even electronic games behaved mysteriously when she attempted to operate them. That’s why she stuck so determinedly to her rust-bucket of a VW. It wasn’t new and shiny and sophisticated; and potentially lethal! The only other piece of machinery she trusted was her second-hand blender. She had bought it from a London flatmate who had originally purchased it in the Middle East. It had an indistinguishable brand name and made a horrific noise when it worked, but it did work. ‘Buster’ Julia affectionately called her miracle and it was in her car now, resting reverently in her suitcase along with her very expensive set of German chef’s knives and the weighty cookery tome that was her Bible.

  Julia had intended to leave early Sunday afternoon, but her little break had made her lazy and it was nearly four o’clock before she threw her overnight bag into the front seat of her car and said goodbye to her parents.

  Ben gave her a brotherly once-over. Julia’s pint-sized figure was clad in a warm but shrunken sweatshirt, bearing the legend: Conserve Our Wildlife … Love a Kiwi. Black leather jacket and matching jeans and cowboy boots completed the picture. For convenience she had bunched her flyaway curls into short pigtails and several recalcitrant freckles stood out prominently on her scrubbed cheeks.

  ‘You look like a pre-adolescent bikie. Want to borrow my wheels?’

  Julia wrinkled her nose. ‘You should be so lucky. I know you’re just jealous of my eternal youth.’

  It wasn’t only her lack of inches that made her look young. The largeness of the deep blue eyes fringed with thick, light brown lashes made the rest of her small, oval face look oddly babyish, as if it still had to grow to adult size.

  Julia hummed and sang as she drove, glad she had worn her leathers as the afternoon grew colder, and her heater failed to function. From Thames she took the west coast road to Tapu, where she turned off on to route 29, which would take her across the Coromandel Ranges to the eastern side of the narrow peninsula.

  As the little Beetle laboured up the narrow twisting road from Tapu the scenery began to change from farmland and regenerated scrub to a proud, natural wilderness. Here the native rainforest grew thick and green, spreading a protective canopy over the land, providing a refuge for some of New Zealand’s rarer birds and animals. Even Julia, who was essentially a city girl at heart, felt the impact of its awesome beauty.

  She seemed to be the only car on the road, which was a blessing since her speed was negligible on the slopes. The bush dropped unnervingly away from the edge of the road, down into the deep foliage of the gullies. Rimu, Totara, Kahikatea, Rata and Kauri, all prized for their timber, grew straight and tall on the ridges, protected from exploitation by their inaccessibility. The road seemed to be a puny attempt by man to impose himself on nature but at least it was sealed, and well marked, thought Julia as she carefully rounded another corner.

  Coming over the top of another stomach-churning rise something caught Julia’s eye in her rear-view mirror and she gasped out loud. A great, gleaming grey monster had slunk up behind her. Low-slung and dangerous it was gaining on her rapidly. It must slow down, realised Julia looking at the road ahead, there would be nowhere safe for him to pass for a few more bends yet, all uphill. It had to be a him, women didn’t seem to feel the same need to prove themselves on the road that men did.

  He did slow down, but not enough. He came annoyingly close, snapping at her heels and stayed there through several curves, obviously expecting her to pull over and let him pass. He needed a lesson in manners whoever he was—some flashy young buck with more money than he knew what to do with! She didn’t know what the car was, but it was foreign and expensive.

  Suddenly there was a feathery flash in front of her bonnet and instinctively, foolishly, Julia put her foot on the brake and swerved slightly. The Beetle practically stopped dead and to her disbelief Julia felt a distinct bump at her rear. The idiot had actually hit her!

  Julia groaned as she pulled the car over on to a narrow shoulder. She was suffering an acute attack of the guilts—she should have let him pass, instead of boorishly hogging the road with her decrepit machine. However he, being at the rear, was the one who would be at fault in law, Julia was sure, and she wasn’t about to allow herself to be talked into taking the blame. She only hoped he wasn’t too mad.

  She sneaked a look in her peeling wing mirror and saw the grey car crouched behind her. A door opened and a silver head poked out. She relaxed slightly. An elderly man—a wealthy old gentleman who was unlikely to offer physical violence. She wound down her window, drawing in a breath at the sharpness of the air. It had an edge, a purity, that you didn’t find in the city.

  Her hand froze on the handle as she saw the head go up as the man pushed himself up out of the car … and up, and up, and up … Goodness—he was a giant! Broad and tall he came striding towards her as though he wore seven-league boots. He wasn’t elderly either. As he got closer, filling her mirror, she could see that he was only in his thirties, the deceptive grey hair was prematurely so.

  The incredible hulk reached her and bent down to her window. His eyes were grey too, grey and cold and she waited for the blast of ice from the voice.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  She stared. His voice was soft and deep, almost gentle. She looked at him suspiciously. Maybe he was a psychopath on the loose. Men were usually so touchy about their cars and here he was sounding as if he was just passing the time of day with her.

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice squeaked and she coughed. ‘Are you?’

  ‘Shall we look at the damage?’

  It was a clear invitation for her to step out of the car but she hesitated as he straightened and she caught sight of the hands hanging loosely by his sides. They matched the rest of him for size. She swallowed, then looked back at the grey car and was reassured by its luxuriousness.

  She got out of the car, wishing her boots had a few inches more heel. Why, she only came up to his chest! She was even more determined not to be intimidated. She marched around to the front of his car and closed her eyes briefly at its pristine, untouched beauty. The curving
black bumper gripped in the mouth of the monster had nary a scratch. The blinkered bonnet sloped down to a silver trident logo—a Maserati; they cost well into six figures Julia remembered from a magazine article, no wonder the man didn’t seem too concerned about a minor bump, all his troubles must be padded with money.

  The Beetle had come out of the encounter the worse, though only the bumper was dented. The Hulk went down on his haunches and inspected the damage. Standing behind him Julia was presented with an acre of broad back covered with impeccable Harris Tweed. The trousers were tweed too, and the plain brown leather shoes screamed Italy. Julia, who didn’t have an envious bone in her body nonetheless felt peeved about his calmness.

  ‘You were following too closely you know,’ she stated firmly.

  ‘Fortunately there’s not much damage,’ the soft voice replied. ‘The car is insured, I presume?’

  ‘Yes. But it’s not my insurance company that’s going to have to pay out.’

  He stood up, surveyed her steadily. She waited for the denial, the defence, but it didn’t come. Instead he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and produced a pen and a square business card. He turned it over and wrote on the back, supporting the card on a broad palm.

  Taking the hint Julia went back to the open door of the VW and rummaged in her shoulder bag. She scribbled her name and address and the name of her insurance company on a torn-off scrap of perfumed pink notepaper. Her hand shook slightly and she frowned. The accident must have given her more of a shock than she’d thought. She backed out of the car and came up against a solid tweed wall.

  ‘Sorry,’ she thrust her piece of paper at him and accepted the card. G. B. H. Walton said the strong black type on matt white and Julia was transfixed by the initials. What did they stand for—Grievous Bodily Harm? She giggled.

  ‘Accidents amuse you?’ Again the soft, slow voice, unnerving from such a tough-looking individual. He didn’t sound surprised, he had probably judged her by the leathers; misjudged her rather, Julia thought.