Comparative Strangers (5 page)

When she heard the sound of a car outside two hours later, Amanda found she was mentally nerving herself to meet her mother’s reproaches. Mrs Conroy had been almost distraught when Amanda phoned her with the bald statement that her engagement was over.

‘Darling, you can’t be serious!’ she had wailed. ‘You’ve had some silly tiff, that’s all. I know it is. I’m coming home immediately to talk to you.’

She had rung off before Amanda could tell her that the time for talking was long past. But then, her mother adored Nigel, and probably wouldn’t have listened.

Amanda put down the crossword puzzle she’d been staring at as if the clues were in Sanskrit, and went into the hall to meet her mother, trying to think of some placatory remark as she did so.

When the doorbell rang, she felt almost reprieved. It must be Mr Ambrose, she thought with relief. He’d promised in response to her urgency to ‘pop along as soon as maybe’ and see to her bedroom window. With luck, it might even be repaired before Mrs Conroy returned, and her mother need know nothing about it.

The last person she expected to see on the doorstep was Nigel.

If she’d had her wits about her, she would have slammed the door in his face, but, as she stood, gaping at him, he walked past her into the hall. He was rather pale, and there was a small muscle jumping at the corner of his mouth. He stood flicking his driving gloves against the palm of his hand.

He said, ‘Manda, I had to come here. I couldn’t keep away. We’ve both had time to think—to calm down. You’ve got to listen to me.’ He looked round. ‘Are you alone this time?’ The question was edged. He was asking if Malory had gone, she knew, yet she felt curiously reluctant to tell him she was alone in the house.

She lifted her chin. ‘I have someone fixing the bedroom window.’

‘Oh?’ His surprise was too elaborate. ‘Is it broken?’

She said thickly, ‘You know it is, because you did it. What with that and those phone calls, you really surpassed yourself last night.’

He looked away, flushing. ‘I know—I know’ he said heavily. ‘I think I must have gone slightly crazy. That’s one of the reasons I came here—to ask you to forgive me for all that rubbish.’

‘A brick through the window is hardly rubbish,’ she said angrily. ‘I could have been killed.’

‘I told you, I wasn’t thinking straight.’ He took a step towards her. ‘Darling, can’t we sit down and talk our problems out, quietly and sensibly?’

‘No, we can’t. I thought I’d made that clear already.’ Amanda stood her ground. ‘There’s nothing to discuss, Nigel. It’s finished between us— over for good.’

‘But when you said it you were too angry to listen to reason’ he said.

‘Reason?’ she echoed. ‘Nigel, I caught you making love to someone else—to your brother’s woman. What reason can there possibly be for that? What excuse?’

‘That’s what I’m here to explain.’ He spread his hands in appeal. ‘Manda, you have to let me defend myself. You can’t just—condemn me like this. We still love each other—you know that, darling.’

‘You have a very strange way of showing it,’ Amanda countered coldly. ‘But say what you have to say—if you must.’

He was silent for a moment. ‘You don’t have to tell me I’ve been a crass, insensitive fool. I know that. Since I met you, I always considered I was immune to temptation from other women. But it always existed.’ His mouth twisted in self-deprecation. ‘Rally-drivers have their groupies, too.’

‘But I can’t believe Clare was one of them.’

‘No,’ he conceded. ‘But she made all the running, once she realised who I was. She kept phoning me— throwing herself at me.’

‘So, she didn’t just happen to be at Calthorpe?’

‘No, she followed me there deliberately. I—I lied about that. She wouldn’t let me alone. She kept pestering me.’

‘Poor Nigel,’ Amanda said with irony. ‘How very trying for you. And, I suppose, in the end temptation just became too much. Or did she rape you?’

Dull colour rose in his face. ‘No, of course not. But I’m no saint, sweetheart. I have my weaknesses, and maybe it’s better for you to know about them before rather than after we’re married.’ As her lips parted in protest, he lifted his hand to halt whatever she was going to say. He said intensely, ‘Because you are going to marry me, darling. You must. You’re not going to let one stupid, spoiled little tart ruin our lives.’ As he said it, he smiled at her, the blue eyes suddenly ingenuous and appealing. ‘I need you, Manda.’

His hands reached for her, and she stepped back, away from him.

She said, ‘You talk as if your—fling with Clare were the only issue involved, but it isn’t. It’s the way you’ve acted since. Those beastly phone calls— my window.’

‘Darling.’ Nigel was still smiling. ‘I was beside myself—coming here and finding Malory with you was an awful jolt. I hung around for hours, waiting for him to leave.’ He shook his head. ‘When I realised he wasn’t leaving, I went a bit mad, thinking all kinds of crazy things.’ He laughed. ‘I had this image of him in bed with you—up in that room. Somehow, I convinced myself that it was true, that it was happening, and something—snapped.’ He gave a self-deprecatory sigh. ‘Guilty conscience, I suppose, but I had this idea he was spending the night with you to get his own back over Clare. As if a sexless nonentity like Malory could ever dream up such a scheme!’ He held out his hand to her. ‘And as if you’d let him, anyway. After all, if I couldn’t get near you, it’s hardly likely you’d sleep with Mal.‘

There was a long silence. Amanda could feel a slow, hot blush reaching up from her toes.

‘Well, say something, darling.’ Nigel sounded half amused, half impatient. ‘Don’t just stand there, or I shall start to think you let my dear brother into bed with you last night, after all.’ And, as Amanda lifted her hands and pressed them to her burning face, he said slowly, his voice sinking to a whisper, ‘Christ—it’s true, isn’t it? You slept with him, didn’t you, you bitch?’

Sheer embarrassment, as well as anger, lit the fuse of Amanda’s temper. ‘Yes, I did.’ She flung her head back defiantly. ‘And I don’t care if it was just vengeance for Clare.’

As soon as the words were out she regretted them, but it was too late. She couldn’t go back and explain the truth about her night with Malory, because it would only expose them both to Nigel’s scorn, and Malory didn’t deserve that.

Nigel said hoarsely. ‘You little whore! I wish that brick had killed you both.’

‘I get the general idea.’ Her voice shook. ‘Now, get out of here, and don’t come back.’

He half turned, then swung back towards her, his eyes raking her with a kind of furious greed. ‘No—why should I? Now that Malory’s given you one, you haven’t got the excuse of your everlasting virginity to hold me off any more.’ He laughed savagely. ‘Maybe I should even be grateful to him for— opening the way for me, so to speak.’

His crudity made her cringe. She took another step backwards. ‘Don’t come near me.’

‘You should have said that last night,’ he jeered. ‘You and Malory—my God! I didn’t think it was possible. Does he have a chemical formula for sex, too? He’s probably writing up the results of the experiment in triplicate at this very moment.’

‘Don’t you dare say things like that about Malory!’ Amanda threw back at him fiercely. ‘He has all the qualities you so signally lack—kindness and compassion, among them.’

‘Oh, is that what you look for in a bed-partner?’ His tone dripped contempt. ‘My mistake, sweetheart. What did he do as foreplay—cry on your shoulder?’

‘You’re despicable…’

‘And Malory, of course, is Sir Galahad,’ Nigel almost snarled. ‘If he’s such a paragon, my sweet, why don’t you marry him, instead?’

She said recklessly, ‘I intend to…’ and stopped with a little gasp as she saw Nigel’s face darken with more than anger.

‘That,’ he said, too evenly, ‘is if he still wants you, when I’ve finished with you.’

She’d retreated as far as the kitchen door, her hand clumsily, desperately fumbling with the handle, when she heard the back door open, and Mr Ambrose’s stolid, dependable tones call, ‘Miss Conroy—are you there, love? I’ve come to see to that little matter you mentioned.’

Her voice cracking, she called back, ‘I’m here— in the hall.’

The door behind her opened, and Mr Ambrose stood there, looking at them, red-faced and sturdy, with shrewd eyes under bushy eyebrows. He said, ‘Not butting in, am I?’

'No,‘ Amanda said breathlessly. ’Mr Templeton was just leaving—weren’t you, Nigel?‘

For one shocked moment, she thought he was going to hit her. Then he said, ‘Yes, I’m going. But you’ll be sorry for this, Amanda. I promise you that.’

As the front door closed behind him, she felt her legs begin to shake under her.

Mr Ambrose said, ‘Seems in a bit of a state, your young man.’ He paused, then added expression-lessly, ‘A window, was it?’

She flushed. ‘Yes.’

He had almost finished replacing the pane when Mrs Conroy arrived back. She was laden with parcels which she dumped on the drawing-room sofa before turning her gaze on Amanda.

‘My dear child, you look positively dreadful. You’re fretting for Nigel, I know you are. So why don’t you go and phone him, and tell him you’re sorry for whatever it was, and then we can all be happy again?’

Amanda said quietly, ‘What makes you think I’m the one who should apologise?’

Mrs Conroy shrugged. ‘Darling, what does it matter? It just needs one of you to make the first move.’

‘The question’s academic, anyway,’ Amanda said. ‘Nigel’s been here already, and I sent him away.’

‘Are you out of your mind?’ her mother almost shrieked.

‘I don’t think so—not any more.’

‘But what in the world could you have quarrelled about so drastically?’ Mrs Conroy wailed. ‘You were so well-suited—so perfect for each other in every way. And Nigel adored you.’

And flattered
you
, Amanda thought suddenly, but didn’t say it.

She sat staring at the carpet while her mother continued her diatribe, naming Nigel’s manifold perfections and desirability as a son-in-law.

She wished she could tell her the whole story, but it was impossible. The first thing her mother would want to know would be why she’d gone to Calthorpe in the first place. And that was unanswerable. One of the cornerstones of Mrs Con-roy’s philosophy was that unmarried people did not sleep together. The permissive society had only served to strengthen this firmly held belief, although Amanda suspected with wry affection that, as far as her mother was concerned, sex, even for married people, was not a major priority.

A broken engagement was enough of a disappointment for her mother to cope with. Mrs Conroy didn’t need to know that her only child had been about to kick over the traces so shamelessly.

Suddenly Mrs Conroy paused, and stared up at the ceiling. ‘There’s someone moving around upstairs.’

‘Only Mr Ambrose. He’s mending a broken window in my room.’

Mrs Conroy’s eyes widened. ‘How on earth…?’

‘I was doing some cleaning, and I had a slight accident, that’s all.’ Somehow, her mother had to be protected from the truth here, too.

‘Oh, I don’t understand any of this.’ Her mother looked on the verge of tears. ‘You seem determined to smash everything about you,’ she added unfairly. ‘And you don’t even consider the work you’re giving me. All kinds of arrangements will have to be cancelled—I only hope they haven’t actually started printing the invitations. It’s all too bad.’

Amanda touched her shoulder. ‘Why don’t you put your feet up, and let me make you some tea?’ she urged gently. I’m sorry you’ve taken it like this, but you’ve got to believe that I can’t be happy with Nigel. And I’d really rather not talk about it any more.‘

It was a miserable weekend, Mrs Conroy kept her verbal reproaches to herself, but the long-suffering looks and sighs she sent in Amanda’s direction were almost worse than a direct onslaught.

Amanda went for a long walk, and on Saturday afternoon occupied herself with some furious digging in the garden, using her inevitable weariness as an excuse for an early night.

She awoke on Sunday morning to the drowsy reflection that she only had a few more hours of silent recrimination to endure before she could go back to London and lose herself in her job. She wondered sleepily what her flatmates would have to say about her broken engagement and decided that, although Fiona and Maggie would treat it as a nine-day wonder, Jane wouldn’t be altogether surprised.

She was shocked out of her somnolence by her mother’s thin, wavering scream from downstairs.

What’s Nigel done now? was Amanda’s first thought as she threw back the bedclothes. Probably a dead cat through the letter-box!

But the hall seemed mercifully free of felines, alive or dead, as she arrived downstairs, tightening the sash of her robe. Mrs Conroy seemed to be confronted by nothing more startling than the Sunday papers.

‘What in the world…?’ Amanda began wearily, then stopped as her mother turned horrified eyes on her.

‘Amanda,’ she said emotionally. ‘Oh, dear God—the scandal—the disgrace! I can’t believe it.’

‘What can’t you believe?’ Amanda was totally bewildered.

Mrs Conroy thrust a paper at her with a trembling hand. ‘Read it,’ she said with a sob. ‘See what you’ve done.’

The tabloid headlines were quite unequivocal. ‘Rally-driver’s heartbreak!’ screamed one. And ‘Jilted Nigel says, “I forgive her,” another proclaimed.’ 

Nausea rose in Amanda’s throat. She whispered, ‘He couldn’t have done this. Oh, God, he couldn’t…’

She began to scan the first story with feverish concentration. ‘While rally-driver Nigel Templeton was celebrating a personal best at Calthorpe this week, he was unaware that heartache awaited in his love-life’ the opening paragraph ran emotively. ‘For his fiance, lovely twenty-year-old Amanda Conroy, was enjoying a secret love-tryst with Nigel’s own brother, Malory Templeton, millionaire owner of Templeton Laboratories. And yesterday, a stunned Nigel revealed that the couple intend to wed.’

‘Oh, my God!’ Amanda couldn’t read any more.

Mrs Conroy was weeping openly. ‘Poor Nigel, poor boy. No wonder you didn’t want to apologise to him. You were too ashamed. Meeting his brother in “a hideaway love-nest”.’ She invested the words with horrified scorn, then struck the paper she was reading with her fist.