Hold Back the Night (11 page)

❧

She could not stay in Paris, of course. In going home, a spur-of-the-moment decision, she had not informed the landlady of her intention to leave forever, although she had packed all of her considerable luggage and left it in her room for later pick-up by a cartage company. She hadn't wanted to answer questions then, and she didn't want to answer them now. But her condition was far from being visible to the naked eye, and it was still safe to return to the pension while she decided what to do.

Her decisions were made calmly, with none of the impulsiveness that had characterized her actions until then. They were made easier, and perhaps inevitable, by the facts of her birth. Her birth certificate and her passport had both been issued in the name of Domini Greey; she had been born an American citizen, and she knew she would have no trouble getting into that country. Nor were there any language barriers: her education had seen to that. She was thoroughly fluent in the tongue of her mother country, and because her tutors had all been from the United States, even her accent and idiom would arouse no curiosity as to her background. And curiosity, anybody's curiosity, was something she didn't want. She had been forbidden to use her father's name, and use it she would not. And she would not beg; her wish to cry had long since given way to a cold, despairing pride.

She booked a flight, fortunately managing to take over someone's last-minute cancellation on a charter that was to leave almost immediately. Such funds as she had she withdrew from the bank, regretting the impulses that had led her to spend incautiously over the months. She repacked her luggage, weeding out all things that were too impractical or too youthful or too heavy. With dry eyes and icy resolve, she chucked her paintings in the garbage, refusing to let herself dwell on the childish confidence with which she had painted them. She spoke to the landlady briefly, long enough to discover that ... much to that good woman's disgust ... Nicole had found herself a protector, a wealthy American from Miami Beach, and left for the United States without so much as a word to Sander in the hospital.

'She came by to pick up a sculpture of herself,' the landlady sniffed. 'Can you believe, she pretends she loves him still? She says she stayed away only because she cannot bear to see him as he is. Pah! She loves only herself, that one.'

The landlady also revealed that Sander was being moved to the clinic in Germany on the following day, affording some consolation to Domini that her dealings with D'Allard had had at least one beneficial result. As to her own plans, Domini said nothing of them during the conversation, although she left a note in her room saying that she had gone home. It was unlikely that anyone would discover otherwise for some time.

And then, with a set face that bore the stamp of a purely adult determination, she called a taxi to take herself and two large suitcases to Charles de Gaulle Airport, where she would wait until the time came for her flight. There, she simply pulled out her passport in the name of Domini Greey, and Didi Le Basque ceased to exist.

❧

New York became inevitable, too, because she had insufficient funds to take her very far. She found a cheap room in the TriBeCa area just below SoHo, also an artists' colony, and took what work she could find: waitressing until her waist grew ungainly, and then preparing sandwiches and salads behind the scenes in a restaurant. With no job training and no skills to offer, she had few options, and a brief stab at illustrating children's books resulted in no takers. But somehow she managed, and somehow she put a little aside for her coming confinement.

About two months after her arrival in New York she placed a long-distance call to the pension, grateful that the new direct dialling system concealed the origin of the call. Using her rooming house phone by prior permission, she dialled the pension number, not Sander's. The person who picked up the phone was a new boarder, unknown to

Domini, a circumstance that suited her perfectly well because she wanted to give no explanations to anyone. Reverting easily to French, she asked if Sander's operation had been a success.

'Sander Williams?' The person seemed unsure what Domini was talking about. She started to ask for the landlady, but before she could complete her sentence the new boarder interrupted, '
Un moment, s'il vous plait,
' and vanished from the other end. Domini hung on, counting the tick of expensive minutes. And when Sander's distinctive voice came on the other end a short time later, her own shocked silence contributed another thirty seconds of delay.

He was about to hang up when Domini managed to croak a quick, 'No, please don't. This is Didi Le Basque, Sander. I phoned to ask if ... if your sight had been restored, that's all. I wanted to make sure you were all right. But I didn't want... I didn't expect I'd be speaking to you in person.'

There was another long silence on the line, this time on Sander's end. 'Where are you?' he said gruffly at last, answering none of her questions.

'I.. . I'm at home,' she said, not lying because New York really was her home now. If Sander chose to think she was in France, the assumption was purely his.

'Ah, with Papa,' he said dryly. 'I take it you've decided you're safer there.'

'Sort of,' Domini prevaricated. 'But I phoned to find out about you, Sander. I've been worried, and ... '

'You should never have left your nest in the first place,' Sander interrupted curtly.

'I want to know about your sight, Sander,' she said urgently, thinking about the cost of all this.

'What on earth does it matter to you?' he retorted roughly.

'Because . . . well, I think I'm to blame. If you hadn't been upset about losing Nicole, you wouldn't have been driving so fast. I feel responsible.'

'Then stop feeling responsible,' he snapped. 'My sight is fine; it has been ever since the bandages came off. The operation was a success. I'm back to sculpting too. And ... , ' he paused, and a bitter mockery entered his tone ... 'to remove the last of your guilt, I'm reunited with Nicole. She came back from the States and we're happier than ever. In fact, I imagine we'll get married one of these days. So if you're thinking about coming back to Paris to see me, don't bother! One experience with a spoiled brat like you is enough to last me for the rest of my life!'

And there the conversation ended. Domini hung up without even answering his final unkind cut, accepting everything he said as gospel. His very rudeness seemed to give credence to his story, and in fact eventually helped Domini to start putting the bitter memory of Sander Williams behind her.

For the last few months of her pregnancy, due to the difficulty of standing all day long, Domini undertook a disappointingly unremunerative job selling subscriptions by telephone. But when Tasey was born and the expenses began to mount, she realized she would have to try to make her living in some other way, preferably at something that could be done with a small baby in tow.

As it happened, she invented a job for herself. While trudging the pavements in search of work after her arrival in New York, she had several times seen display people in the process of creating marvellously inventive windows on Fifth Avenue and in other exclusive areas of the city. SoHo, she noted, had lots of shops, but the windows were given to few flights of imagination; they relied heavily on merchandise display and very little on props. Casual conversations in several stores produced the information that Fifth Avenue displays were far too pricey for SoHo tastes. And so she started offering to take on the job for one merchant or another at cut-rate prices that would have made any established display firm blanch.

In time, the first few clients became a few dozen, and as the stored props increased in quantity, the rented room of necessity became a large sunny loft. Domini was not getting rich, but because she kept her prices to SoHo standards, her small one-person business was struggling along well enough to keep paying the rent.

In the beginning, when Tasey had been no more than a rosy bundle in a baby carriage, Domini had taken her daughter along on all assignments, and for a time she had taken her as a toddler too. But the difficulty of dressing windows with an active youngster on the sidelines had caused too many memorable moments, both tearful and hilarious. Some clients had not been amused. And so, when Tasey turned three, Domini had reluctantly arranged for day care, a considerable expense but a necessary one. Her next goal, still unrealized, was to upgrade her clientele to include some of the more exclusive boutiques she had been unable to approach while dragging a small child along.

During her stay in New York, Domini had made friends, met men, had dates, put much of the past behind her. Life had been a struggle but it had had its rewards: Tasey, for one. True, she still regretted the loss of her unrecapturable youth, still mourned in her heart for the joyful innocent she had been, still grieved at times for the fearless child who no longer conquered the unicorn and the universe except in paint. Because she loved her father deeply, there was inside her a great burden of unshed tears. In four years she had cried about other things, but never about that.

But life had not been totally unkind to her, as it had been unkind to Sander. That he had suffered in his blindness was engraved in every harsh, bitter line on his face. Domini tried to imagine what it must be like to live in a world where no colours existed, where no smiles could be seen, where no sunrises could be watched. What a terrible price for fate to exact from an artist!

Lying in his bed in the dim, unfamiliar room, choked by old guilt and new compassion, Domini thought about his eyes, those deep, embittered, sightless eyes. The eyes pulled her downward, downward, downward into their silvered depths.

Domini sat bolt upright in the bed, alarm jolting her to full wakefulness at once. Oh, Lord. How could she have slept? The tranquillizer, of course. But why hadn't Miranda wakened her as promised? Through the gable window she could see that it was very nearly dark outside, the early darkness of December, and Tasey should be picked up about this time. In the half-light of the gloomy room she spotted no bedside lamp. She slid out from beneath the sheets, raced to the light switch at the door, and confirmed with a quick glance at her wristwatch, the last gift ever given to her by her father, that the day-care hours had ended two minutes before.

There was no pause to contemplate memories now or the circumstances that had brought her to this place. Domini's mind was fully in the present. She threw off Sander's shirt and snatched her own clothes, piled in orderly fashion on a straight-backed chair. The cream slacks and close-fitting brown turtleneck were pulled on in record time, and so were the fleece-lined boots, which had been standing neatly on the floor. Giving no thought to the disorder of her hair, Domini snatched her coat and handbag, and seconds later she was dashing along a very dim hall.

'Watch that floorboard!' snapped a voice.

The warning came too late; Domini was already pitching forward. Just in time a pair of muscular arms prevented her headlong plummet to disaster.

When reason reasserted itself, she found herself upright again, against the hard wall of a man's chest. It was Sander; she knew that with every quivering nerve she possessed. Badly shaken by the near fall, she started to gulp air, making no immediate attempt to extricate herself from his steadying embrace.

'Are you trying to add a sprained ankle to your other complaints?' he asked sarcastically. 'In a strange house, my friend, it's wise to look where you're going.'

Heart still palpitating erratically, Domini took a deep breath and tried to pull away. Two hands clamped over her upper arms, preventing escape. 'I'm in a terrible hurry,' she gasped. 'My daughter...'

But Sander had no intention of letting her go, and his fingers only tightened on her arms. 'Not so fast,' he said. 'Your daughter's been arranged for.'

Gripped by anxiety, Domini only half heard what he had said. 'I have to pick her up,' she said, straining towards the stairs, barely visible now in the growing gloom. The door of the bedroom must have been hanging off plumb, because it had squeaked slowly closed, cutting off her one real source of light.

Sander didn't release his hold. 'Miranda's already left to pick her up,' he informed Domini dryly. 'Your daughter will be quite safe, and there's no need to worry. Now if I let you go will you listen, instead of taking off like a bat out of hell?'

Domini nodded, relief flooding through her at the assurance that Tasey would not be left waiting. But with the mother in her relaxing, the woman took over, and at once she became piercingly aware of Sander's bigness and closeness, of the powerful hands that imprisoned her so effectively. A brief weakness invaded her legs, turning them wobbly as memories of their last physical encounter surged to the forefront of her mind. Barring the moments when she had been hysterical or unconscious earlier in the day, four years had passed since she had submitted to Sander's touch, and yet the memory of it was there in her bones and in her blood, giving the contact an impact that robbed her of reason. It was a moment before she had the wit to remember that he could not possibly have seen her nod of assent.

'I . . . yes,' she said with a breathlessness that could no longer be blamed on her precipitate flight.

He took his hands away very slowly, as if not quite sure whether Domini could be trusted. 'If you'd tried those stairs at the pace you were going, you'd most certainly have broken your neck,' he remarked sardonically. 'Are you always so impetuous?'

In the heavy gloom of the hall his eyes were no more than pools of darkness where no silver could be seen, his mouth no more than a grim shadow. Domini's nerve endings were still tingling, her pulses racing, her skin flushed with heat. Could he still affect her so deeply after all these years?

But she was a mother after all, and such thoughts were thrust aside as swiftly as they surfaced. 'Miranda's gone to pick up Tasey? But she doesn't know where

'Oh, yes she does. You gave her your address, remember. She phoned the shopkeeper below your apartment and fortunately managed to find out where you take your daughter for day care. You were sleeping so soundly it seemed a shame to disturb you.'

A new kind of alarm sounded somewhere in Domini's head. 'Surely your sister's not... bringing Tasey... here?' she asked faintly, clutching at a dimly discerned wall for support. This was becoming a nightmare of the worst sort, and the fact that she could now see only looming black outlines added to the strong sense of unreality.

'As a matter of fact, yes. You're both staying for supper, and Miranda won't take no for an answer.'

'Oh, Lord, no,' whispered Domini, too aghast to obey ordinary caution in her reaction. And then she started to laugh shakily as the full impossibility of the situation hit her. In the last moments before darkness swallowed the hall altogether, she wondered wildly if she was imagining the whole crazy thing.

'Oh, Lord, yes,' Sander contradicted, disapproval deepening his voice. 'I'm not going to have to slap you again, am I?'

Domini forced down the returning hysteria. With an effort of will, her voice returned to some semblance of normality. 'We can't possibly stay,' she objected.

'Tell that to my sister,' Sander said in a sceptical tone, his disembodied voice giving her some bearings in the dark. 'Nothing can cure her of the Good Samaritan instinct. And this time I think she's right ... you're in no condition to be going home with an active three-year-old who needs to be fed. We'll see you get home safely when it's the child's bedtime, and not before.'

Rationality restored, Domini realized that she had no option now but to wait until Miranda arrived with Tasey. In fact the worst thing she could do was to go chasing off in hope of finding them; if she missed them it would only make matters worse. As to staying for a meal, however, that was quite out of the question, but there was no sense arguing the point with Sander. As long as she managed to get Tasey out of there before the two connected!

'Now come along, you can wait for your daughter down on the second floor.'

She heard him begin to move along the hall in the direction of the stairs. 'I can't see a thing,' she said, expecting him to switch on a light.

'Dark already?' His short, harsh laugh was followed by the quiet ring of returning footsteps. 'Sorry,' he apologized as he reached her side. 'It's easy for me to forget.'

Domini froze as his palm stretched forward to determine her position and grazed against a breast. But the contact was fleeting, followed by a sure seizure of her elbow, as if that one swift touch had told him where to find it. With no choice, she allowed herself to be guided along the dark hall, her mind rebelling but her skin oddly sensitive where he touched her.

Near the stairs he halted and flicked a light switch that gave faint illumination to the landing below, leaving the third floor dark. 'I'll lead the way,' he instructed, at last releasing her elbow. 'The stair carpet's torn, and it can be a little tricky.'

Domini followed, picking her way carefully down the obstacle course of a stair runner so threadbare that it should have been replaced years before. Were Sander and his sister so pitifully poor? In his bedroom she had been aware of dingy walls and cheap furniture, but if she had given it thought ... which she hadn't ... she would have guessed it was only because a blind man would likely have little interest in brightening his surroundings. And on street level, which had to be kept presentable for business, the gallery had not suggested deprivation. But up here, hidden from the public eye...

With growing disturbance Domini noted the places where great chunks of plaster had fallen away, the tired wallpaper at least two decades old, the sagging banister with paint so badly chipped that the wood was half denuded. As she reached the second-floor landing she felt a lump in her throat at the naked low-wattage light bulb suspended from the ceiling and the cracked glass in a curtainless hall window where someone's neon sign blinked monotonously through. For the first time the full horror of the various things she had seen began to penetrate. She herself lived in no particular luxury, but this...?

There was no need now to wonder why Sander had not switched on the light on the third floor; Domini knew. She remembered only too well the grumblings of the landlady in the pension. Were the pennies saved in electricity so desperately important to Sander and his sister?

All the old burdens of conscience returned with a choking force that clogged Domini's throat with compassion. Life offered so little for a man imprisoned by blindness. And for that blindness, although rationally she knew the brakes of a school bus in France were at fault, she still felt to blame.

'I can't take you to the living-room because there isn't one,' Sander said as he opened a door, flicked another switch, and stood back to allow Domini to precede him. On his face there was a proud, hard expression, as though he might have guessed at some of Domini's reactions to the surroundings. 'As you'll no doubt see for yourself in a moment, some walls were ripped out in order to make one big working area. It's the only thing left on this floor ... that and the kitchen. Won't you step in?'

Ahead lay a large room inadequately lit by another unadorned light bulb. Guiltily Domini remembered the one she had thoughtlessly left burning in the bedroom on the third floor, but the look of harsh pride on Sander's face prevented her from mentioning it. Unnaturally silent, she walked through the door and came to a halt.

The space Domini saw was Spartan in the extreme but by no means empty. As Sander had forewarned, the wall was scarred with raw plaster and open studs where partitions had at some point been ripped out to create one large room. There was no carpet. In the air was the smell of raw wood shavings, although the bare floor had been swept spotlessly clean. With different furnishings and better light, it might have qualified as a studio, but that name would have been far too pretentious for what Domini saw. Most of the room was taken up with the tools of carpentry and woodworking ... two workbenches neatly fitted with a range of implements such as planes, chisels, screwdrivers, brace and bit, various clamps and vices, and neat rows of nails and screws in empty jam jars. There were no power tools that she could see. A collection of various kinds of saws hung on one wall in an orderly progression, largest to smallest, as if they always hung that way when not in use. On the shelves that lined another wall were assorted pieces of raw lumber, evidently stacked according to size and category. Domini had the strong impression that not a thing was out of place.

Had Sander taken to wood sculpture of some sort? For a blind man it would be somewhat easier than granite or marble, his former materials of choice. With the evidence of the unicorn, it seemed a likely guess.

'Won't you sit down?' Sander offered, indicating an area where four painted chairs, in wretched condition were gathered around a large table covered in shabby old-fashioned oilcloth. Beyond the grouping lay a door that led to a darkened room, the kitchen Domini presumed, judging by the worn linoleum faintly visible in the angle of the doorway.

'Thank you,' she accepted, chilled at the various evidences of extreme poverty. Depositing her coat and purse on one of the chairs and herself on another, she looked at Sander, expecting him to sit too. He remained standing, his head erect and his expression not particularly encouraging. Politeness demanded that she make some remark instead of sitting in total silence, and so Domini controlled her wayward feelings enough to say, 'May I see some of your work? I love the unicorn so much.'

'I agreed to your terms, by the way,' he remarked abruptly. Then he gestured towards a wall behind Domini, not in her line of vision. 'The rest of my output is over there.'

Domini turned to some shelves she had not noted before. At once she saw that there was finished work on the shelves and that it was not work that should be done by a sculptor of power and potential, and because she could not bear to think of any gifted person being brought so low, the tears came stingingly to her eyes.

What she saw was toys. Simple toys. She remembered now that she had seen similar toys at the back of the gallery but had paid them no attention. Most of them were wooden building blocks of assorted sizes, but there were also tidy piles of other things: squat-legged pegboards fitted with big round pegs and toy hammers, balancing toys, several wooden weathervanes, a simple solid dollhouse. There was also the parts of what appeared to be a very plain locomotive together with a pile of grooved wooden track. All were sanded and varnished in natural wood, with changes of colour and grain afforded only by the choice of raw material.

They were the kind of handmade toys that had become relatively rare since the advent of plastic, mainly because few workers could be induced to produce such things for the pittance to be earned. Such toys cost the buyer a comparative fortune, but for the artisan they produced very little, probably not even the minimum wage, considering the time and care involved in the making.

With wet eyes and fingers pressed to her trembling mouth to hold back the words she wanted to say, she turned to look at Sander's shuttered face, at the bitter pride of it, the forbidding lines of denial and pain. Life had exacted a terrible price for him. How could one hate a man who had suffered so?