Unknown (4 page)

'Then I must say goodnight. But you will persuade your father to see me, will you not? I will give you a ring tomorrow to learn when I may call.'

Not if but when, she noticed.

'I'm sure Mr Vincent will be honoured to receive you,' Mr Wylie declared unctuously.

'The honour will be mine,' Sven assured him, and with another bow towards Sonya, moved on, Thomasina instantly tripping to his side. He inclined his head towards her golden one and laughed at some pert remark she had made. Evidently she had forgiven his rebuff and had returned to the attack.

Derek escorted Sonya out to her car looking annoyed.

'Will your father really see him?' he asked.

'I don't know. I hope not.'

'Need you mention his request?'

Sonya debated that while she unlocked the car. It was a clear starlight night and still quite warm, as it was only September, with the skating season only just begun. Months of arduous endeavour lay ahead of her. Her father expected her to compete in an international sports meeting in Canada in the spring and next year was Olympic year; according to her performance in Canada was her chance of being selected for the Olympic team, a chance which she feared was negligible. Could Sven really help her to prepare for the ordeals ahead? She did not see how.

'I think I'd better,' she told Derek. 'If I don't and somehow it gets round to him, he'd be furious that I hadn't told him. It isn't good for him to be angry.' She sighed.

Derek took his place beside her in the car, declining her offer to let him drive. He preferred not to drive other people's cars, he told her. As she drove away towards Hampstead, she was reflecting that a life spent in perfecting one sport could become very tedious. She supposed she did not possess her father's singleness of purpose which made it such a bind, nor his talent either, she feared. Yet dedicated as he was, he had spared time to woo and wed her mother, though he had told her very firmly that she could not afford a similar indulgence, at least not for some time, because love and marriage were more distracting to a woman than they had been to him.

'Penny for them,' Derek said.

Off guard, she told him, 'I was wishing my father wasn't an ex-skating champion.'

'You couldn't wish it more than I do.'

'If I didn't come to skate we wouldn't have met,' she countered swiftly.

'It doesn't follow, you would have done it for a recreation. Don't tell me you don't like skating.'

'I might like it if I didn't have so much of it. Derek, one night I will go to the theatre with you whatever Daddy says. I'm getting so stale without any fun.'

'That's the spirit!' Derek was delighted by this show of independence. 'You stand up to the old tyrant.'

Which was an unfortunate way to describe him, because Sonya instantly flew to his defence. They were still arguing when they reached her home, and she said coldly:

'Sorry I can't ask you in, but you know the "old tyrant's" rules.'

'Only too well. Goodnight, darling. I'm sorry I was rude about him, but he does rub me the wrong way.'

He went off to find transport home and after garaging the car, Sonya stood in the garden watching the moon rising over the trees. Its pale lemon colour reminded her of Sven Petersen's hair. There was a man who, if the gossip about him did not lie, did not deny himself amorous adventures for the sake of his career. That was what Derek had meant when he called him a heel. Sonya had read a snide little paragraph about the skating champion and his girl-friends. But then he had arrived and could afford to relax when so inclined, but she was still climbing with only her father's fame to back her and no assurance of success.

She sighed again and went into the house. This was a Victorian edifice which had only discreetly been modernised. The front door led into a spacious hall with the staircase running up one side of it. On one side was the large dining room, on the other a smaller room which was used as an office and at one time had been her schoolroom. Her father still conducted a certain amount of business connected with the Stock Exchange over the telephone, and a nondescript young woman came several times a week to deal with his correspondence. The sitting room, or drawing room, was at the back next to the kitchen accommodation which was connected to the hall by a baize-covered door. This was the domain of the couple who ran the house for them. Mrs Matheson was the housekeeper, and her husband was butler-cum-every-thing else, and her father's devoted attendant.

Sonya went upstairs and knocked on her father's bedroom door. At this hour he would have gone to bed. She entered in response to his 'come in'. It was a large pleasant room overlooking the garden at the back, high-ceilinged like all the rooms in the old house, with an open fire blazing in the grate, for though central heating had been installed, Eliot Vincent was always cold. Heavy curtains were drawn against the autumn night.

He lay in the wide high bed, propped up by a mound of pillows, an open book under his hand. He was still a handsome man, though his face was drawn with lines of suffering. His grey hair was thick and plentiful, and his eyes were the same colour as his daughter's. Against all rules of hygiene his dog, Tessa, a black and white springer spaniel, was curled up at the foot of the bed, disdaining the basket on the floor. As Sonya came in, she raised her head with its long drooping ears and wagged her tail, her brown eyes soft and welcoming. Much less so were the grey ones belonging to the man on the bed.

'You're very late,' he complained, glancing at the clock on his bedside table.

'Not really. It's only just after ten.'

'Sven Petersen must have given a lengthy exhibition.' He eyed her suspiciously.

'There was a reception afterwards and I couldn't rush away without congratulating him.'

'Lionising him, I suppose,' Eliot said peevishly. 'He's all I was once.' Exactly what she had told Sven herself. 'Well, he deserves his success. I hope you found his performance instructive.'

This remark irritated Sonya. Whatever she did, wherever she went, must have some bearing upon the destiny he planned for her. Her success had become an obsession with him.

'He was quite good,' she said indifferently.

'He's more than good. You spoke to him?'

'He spoke to me, because I'm your daughter. He ... he wants to meet you.'

Eliot looked gratified. 'He remembered my name?'

'And your fame. He proposes to call upon you.'

Eliot moved restlessly in the bed.

'I'm sure he'll find my present helplessness edifying,' he said bitterly.

'I told him you didn't see anybody.'

'You did? And why shouldn't I meet him if I want to?' The invalid was in a cantankerous mood.

'No reason at all,' Sonya replied patiently. 'But I didn't think you would want to.'

She did not want Sven to visit her home, just why she was not sure, but intuitively she felt his presence would mean trouble.

'Well, you thought wrong,' her father snapped. 'I would like to meet him if only to see how the present generation of skaters compares with the old.'

'It ... it might upset you, and he's a foreigner, a Swede.' Sonya reminded him, as if Sven's nationality made him undesirable.

'A serious-minded race,' Eliot commented. 'They take education very seriously, including sports training. Our own athletes are too frivolous, that's why they're always beaten.'

'Not always, and there are other more valid reasons ...'

'Don't contradict me. I know what I'm talking about, you don't. I've done my best to keep you uncorrupted, but I'm beginning to doubt if the influence of the club is a good one. You've been different since I allowed you to mingle with the members.'

'I've grown up,' Sonya pointed out, 'and you can't always keep me in purdah.'

'Don't exaggerate.' A shade of anxiety crossed his face. 'You know it's only because I don't want you to have too many irrelevant distractions.'

As Sonya was about to make a heated reply, for she had no distractions, Tessa created a diversion by jumping off the bed and starting an onslaught upon her master's slippers.

'Bad dog!' Sonya scolded her, controlling her rebellion which would only upset her father. She retrieved the articles, which being sheepskin had an irresistible attraction for the animal. 'That dog's a menace,' she said, putting the slippers on a chair where she hoped they would be out of reach. 'How many pairs has she destroyed to date?'

Her father chuckled. 'A fairly innocent diversion,' he declared. 'What's a slipper? I can afford to indulge her.'

'If that's your attitude, I'm sorry I took them away from her, but she should be in her basket, not on your bed.'

'She prefers the bed, and I like having her near me. If I don't mind, why should you?'

Unanswerable, but there was something pitiful about the way he turned to his pet for comfort. Sonya's eyes went to a picture above the mantelpiece. It was a large coloured photograph of her mother, not in some acrobatic pose, but wearing a white dress and standing under an apple tree. Estelle had been very lovely, with an elfin charm. Sonya bore little resemblance to her except for her dark hair and a similar bone structure. Estelle Danvers had been an orphan when Eliot had married her, and he quarrelled with his father over the union as he had already fallen out with him about his obsession with skating. His own mother had died at his birth and with her loss the elder Vincent had devoted himself entirely to money-making. He wanted Eliot to go into business and follow in his footsteps and to marry a girl who had money. Estelle Danvers had nothing to recommend her except her pretty face, she did not even know who her parents were. The young Eliot had met her at a charity fete at which she was a stallholder, had immediately been taken with her and pursued the acquaintance. He had taught her to skate and when she had shown amazing aptitude, had partnered her in a pair and together they had swept to success. Eliot had money of his own from his mother's settlement, but when his father died of a stroke, shortly after the fatal accident, he found he had left him all his vast holdings, which even after tax brought in a substantial income which increased with the years. Sonya wondered sadly why such dreadful things had to happen—her mother, so young and vital, wiped out, her father left a wreck. If only Estelle had lived their lives might have been so very different. Eliot followed the direction of her gaze and his face softened.

'You and the dog are all I have left now,' he said gruffly. 'And all I live for is your success.'

Sonya winced inwardly. 'Yes, I know,' she said hastily. 'But about Mr Petersen, do you really want to ask him to come here?'

'I've said so, haven't I? Tell him to come round one evening. Matheson will know if I've any decent port left.'

'He's probably got heaps of engagements,' Sonya prevaricated, recalling Thomasina's provocative manner. It would not take him long to get round to asking her out, and he would find her a much more rewarding companion than her crippled father, or so she hoped.

'You said he wanted to come,' Eliot reminded her.

'Yes, well, I'll see what I can arrange with him,' Sonya agreed. Sven had said he would ring up, but probably he would forget all about it.

If he hadn't, and they fixed a date, she could contrive not to be present when he called. If all else failed she would fall back upon the usual feminine excuse of a headache, though she rarely suffered from one.

As if guessing what was in her mind, her father said sharply:

'You must be there, of course. I'll need you to support me.'

'That you don't,' she returned, laughing. 'You're becoming tyrannical in your old age, darling.'

He looked at her wistfully. 'Do you find me a tyrant? My direction of your life is entirely for your own good, you know, and anything you want, you've only to ask me for it. Is there anything you want?'

She nearly said, a holiday from skating, but bit the words back in time. She knew he would never permit that until she had proved herself, and to ask for it would betray her lack of enthusiasm.

'You've provided for all my needs, Daddy,' she said gently.

'You don't seem to care for jewels, but would you like a diamond bracelet?'

'Not yet, Daddy.' She shivered slightly; if he started giving her diamonds they would only add to her chains. 'Keep it for some occasion when I ... when I ...' she swallowed, 'win something worth while.'

'You'll have the lot then, necklace, bracelet and earrings.'

'Yes, Daddy, thank you.'

'What's the matter, Sonya? Is it that you don't like this Swedish ace? I wouldn't force him on you, you need only say a few polite words and I don't suppose he'll stop long.'

'No, I don't like him,' she admitted, 'but I can put up with him for one evening to please you.'

'Good girl.' He glanced at the clock. 'You'd better be getting to bed, you need all your rest.'

'I suppose so.'

She walked to the window and drew aside the curtain to look out. Moonlight washed the square of garden behind the house, surrounded by trees and bushes to ensure privacy. The dahlias, chrysanthemums and Michaelmas daisies were still in bloom, ghostly flowers, their colour drained from them in the silver light. At the club they would be making whoopee in honour of Sven Petersen. He would not be sent to bed like a child. Eliot watched her with pride, her slim, supple figure, her graceful pose outlined against the curtain.

'It's such a lovely night, it seems a shame to go to bed,' she remarked.

'What's moonlight without a Romeo?' he asked mockingly, then added with a touch of anxiety, 'You haven't found a Romeo, have you, darling?'

Sonya thought of Derek, but he did not answer to that description. She had had her girlish fantasies, inspired by her reading, and her imaginary heroes were always tall and dark with melting black eyes, not narrow blue ones with a derisive glint. Why did she have to recall Sven Petersen? She turned away from the window, letting the curtain fall.

'I haven't met one yet.'

'Win your gold medal first,' he bade her. 'There's plenty of time for other things—you're not nineteen yet, and I couldn't bear to lose you.'