Souls Dryft Read online

  "How can you leave me like this? I could choke on my own blood."

  "Don’t be ridiculous, Richard. Such a baby!"

  "It bloody hurts, damn it!"

  "Of course it hurts. Perhaps next time you’ll look before you—"

  He interrupted me with a torrent of accusations worthy of any child’s tantrum, suggesting I had no heart. "You’ve been out to draw blood since the day we met. Well, congratulations, you’ve succeeded. Go ahead. Leave me. I’ll try not to bleed on the cushions."

  Dramatically he rolled over to face the back of the sofa, clutching the bag of onion rings to his face. When I unlaced his shoes and pulled them off for him, his loud groans fell away to a self-pitying warble. I covered him with Aunt Rose’s patchwork blanket. "You’ll be alright. Find something else to take your mind off it and amuse yourself while I’m gone." It was a suggestion made without thinking and I would live to regret it.

  He lifted the bag just enough to spit out, "Don’t worry about it."

  It happened then, in the blink of an eye – for one second his defenses slipped and so did mine. I bent down and kissed his forehead, as I would to soothe a fractious child. He gripped my hand so tightly he almost cut off the blood flow to my fingers.

  "Grace," he whispered, "stay here with me." His eyes opened, and I was burned by the heady, provocative wildfire. Oh yes, he knew how to get around people. Even me, when he tried.

  "I can’t. I’ve got to go."

  After another breathless moment, he dropped my fingers and I fled the house in a panic.

  I made him dinner that night when I got home, making sure he ate proper vegetables for once. Subdued, he ate quietly, eyes on his plate. The swelling on his nose was considerable, but when I mentioned it, he mumbled, "It’s fine. I don’t want to be any trouble," and lifted his fork slowly, a man at his last meal.

  "I’ve got ice-cream for later," I said cheerily. "But only if you eat all your vegetables."

  When I looked for my notebook that night, it was in the drawer where I left it, but there was a bloody thumbprint on the cover page. I confronted him immediately and received an elaborate excuse about how he went through all my cupboards and drawers, looking for something to "mop up all the blood".

  I should have hidden my book away where he couldn’t find it again, but there was probably no such place.

  He was especially hard to keep entertained without a TV. I often found him staring at a space on the wall, as if he imagined we had one there. So I took out some books from the library, some of my childhood favorites, none of which he’d ever read.

  "How can you never have read Winnie-the-Pooh?" I exclaimed as he sat glaring at the little book I put into his hand. "You must have had one miserable childhood." I was genuinely sorry for the man.

  I found him one afternoon, asleep on the sofa, Winnie-the-Pooh spread out on his chest. His dark eyelashes twitched as he dreamed and he looked very young suddenly, all the lines and worry creases fallen away. I wondered how often he had the chance to take a nap like this and do things that didn’t really matter. When he was first stranded at the house, he was irritable, restless, but now he slowly unwound and sank into the rhythm of the place. And I knew I liked having him there to come home to. The house was good for him too, but I couldn’t keep him there forever, could I? Genny needed him back in her story.

  Knowing I had to do something other than sit looking at him, I went outside into the garden and cut some roses for the table. They were plentiful this summer, the heads big and blousy. By the time he woke up, the sun was setting. "Where have I been?" he mumbled, sitting up and rubbing his tousled head with the one good hand.

  Probably to another time, I mused. Thankfully he came back again. For now.

  * * * *

  As I came out of the bathroom ready for bed, he was standing in the hall waiting to go in. Over the last few days I’d come to know the man quite well – all his odd foibles – but just when I thought I had him pegged, he surprised me with something he did or said. Kept things interesting and a bit too lively.

  "Good night then," I said nervously.

  He didn’t move out of my way, and the hall was too narrow. He was almost too big for that house, especially the upper floor.

  "Are you using my toothpaste again?" He looked over my head and into the bathroom, where his items were neatly stacked on the little glass shelf, alongside my mess of miracle face creams and cotton balls.

  "No," I lied guiltily.

  He waited, arms folded, blocking my escape.

  "Well, actually, I forgot to pick some up today…so I borrowed just a little…" I held up my fingers to demonstrate, "tiny bit…"

  "Of mine?"

  I nodded, sucking on my lips.

  "All you have to do is ask," he said quietly. "Anything of mine you want."

  Hmmm. This was a change of heart indeed. I said okay and thanks; then prepared to walk on, but he remained in my way, feet apart. "Anything else you might like? Just ask."

  "Toothpaste’s… fine," I muttered. The sandalwood scent of his aftershave surrounded me, but it wasn’t suffocating, just incredibly arousing.

  "Sure? Nothing else you need from me?"

  I couldn’t trust myself to speak, so I merely nodded.

  "Well," he sighed gustily. "You know where I am – in case you change your mind. Just across the hall. Only three steps."

  "That’s …generous. Thanks."

  "Just ask. I can give you whatever you want." His lips bent slowly, too close for comfort. Even with one arm out of commission, he was a danger to my self-control.

  I should have run away – gone back in the bathroom and shut the door, bolted it, anything. Instead I turned my face up to his and felt his breath on my lips as he lowered another inch.

  "Grace," he said huskily.

  "Umm?" My eyes were closed.

  "You’ve got my toothpaste in your hair."

  I ducked under his arm and shuffled off like a coward in my bunny slippers. My door shut, I leaned against it, breathing hard. He made no sound out there, and I waited to hear the bathroom door close, but for a few moments he must have remained in the hall. Doing what? I thought I heard his breath against my door, imagined the door handle slowly begin to turn. But it was over.

  The bathroom door clicked shut finally; he turned on the taps and began to whistle.

  What I wanted? How could he give me that when I didn’t even know what I wanted anymore?

  * * * *

  He finally grew tired of sausages and ate whatever I cooked instead. Apparently he decided I was not out to poison him, after all. He even said he liked my cooking. Jack had never been able to lie about that.

  One evening, he asked if I’d like to go out to dinner. "We could go to the Rogue’s Repentance," he added, grinning. "For old times sake."

  But I was afraid he’d tell me what to order and how to eat it, so I declined.

  "Fine," he said, shrugging. "We’ll eat in, then."

  It was just as if we’d always been together. Now it was "we", and it fell quite easily from his lips. I don’t think he noticed it, but I did. I also noticed that, as I stood at the sink and he passed behind me, squeezing by the table to get something out of the drawer, he briefly put his hands on my waist. I closed my eyes. Genny was suddenly wide-awake, waiting for another brush of his fingertips.

  Why was he still here? He could have left by now, if he really wanted to. He could have called someone from the phone box in the village. He could have hired another car. Instead he stayed. Keeping an eye on me and the house? Maybe that was it. Or else he began to feel at home.

  He whistled blithely, apparently unaware of this seething, lusty creature he brought to life inside me. Or was he? When I turned around a few minutes later, he was putting out candles and striking a match he’d found in the drawer.

  "What are you going to do now?" I asked warily. "Slip into something more comfortable?"

  He smiled. "You’re the one that’s supposed to do
that."

  "What about the soft piano music?"

  The candles now lit, he blew out the match. "We don’t need music," he said. "We can just talk."

  Actually we didn’t do a lot of that. We didn’t have to say much of anything, because nothing was missing suddenly. We were in the right place at the right time; there was nothing to argue about tonight.

  "I bought toothpaste today," I told him proudly.

  He looked down at his plate. "Oh." Suddenly he put down his fork, stretched out his good arm and began drumming his fingertips on the table. His chair creaked and his foot tapped. Slowly he raised his eyes to mine. "We have to decide what we’re going to do about the house, Grace."

  "We?" There it was again.

  "I know you’re very fond of the place." His lashes flickered uncertainly. "If you want to go on living here…we can work something out."

  I could have reminded him that the matter of ownership remained unsettled, but I felt no inclination to argue and destroy this peace tonight, so instead I solemnly agreed. We shook on it, reaching between the flickering candles.

  He cleared his throat. "That’s a start, I suppose."

  "A start?"

  "Well…" he shrugged loosely and rather, so I thought, cockily. "You never know what might develop."

  "Do you have plans to develop me then?" I asked, amused. "Am I your new project?"

  He smiled and then winked. He never gave me an answer – at least not with any words.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  After a long day working on the garden, I ran a bath to soak away the aches and pains, but even with the warm water lapping gently around me, I couldn’t stop the frantic whispers. My mind, working overtime, twisted my body round and round; then suddenly let it go, so that I unwound, spinning out of control. When I closed my eyes, I saw us together – he and I. There was no escaping my pirate. I leaned against the lavender-scented bath pillow and let him take over.

  "There is no better man than me," he whispered.

  And I, gasping, was obliged to agree. The bathroom mirror was soon coated in a thick fog, the air heavy with warm, scented moisture that dampened my glowing face and the pages of my notebook, where it lay open on the bath mat, the edges of the paper curling.

  He rapped on the door with his knuckles. "Are you going to be much longer in there, hogging all the hot water and steaming the place up?"

  "Richard, you’d better not be spying through the keyhole," I yelled back.

  A sudden loud knocking rumbled up through the walls, and at first I thought it was the pipes again, until it stopped and I heard Mrs. Tuke’s jaunty shout at the front door. Fully woken from my fantasy, I sat up and reached for a towel, while his heavy steps thumped down the stairs, eager to welcome a visitor – someone to end the boredom of his exile. There are only so many games of scrabble he would put up with, especially as he always lost. I’d even begun to consider letting him win. Throwing on a bathrobe, I crept to the top of the stairs and listened. He chatted away to her like a rescued castaway, completely not himself at all and I wondered if he’d overdosed on pain pills and coffee.

  Once she could get a word in, Mrs. Tuke lavished his broken bits and pieces with sympathy, which he lapped up. As I came down the stairs in my bathrobe, her eyes assessed the situation with evident zeal, her darkest thoughts confirmed. By tomorrow morning the entire village would know all about our sin and debauchery.

  "There you are!" she exclaimed. "I hope I haven’t disturbed anything."

  "Not at all."

  "My lads have been working on that car all week, trying to bring it back to life." She looked at Richard again. "It must be such an inconvenience for you to be stuck here like this. And look at you…" She put a hand to her cheek. "…you’ve been in the wars, as they say."

  "It’s not as bad as it looks," I said. Richard scowled.

  But Mrs. Tuke had something more important to tell us and she was bursting to let it out. "It’s been bothering me for weeks, but I couldn’t remember…" She reached over and laid her hand on his cast. "You know, I’m an old woman, Mr. Downing, and I can remember something from fifty years ago, but couldn’t tell you what I had for breakfast yesterday." She laughed, her eyes wrinkling up, vanishing into her face like raisins in rising dough. "You reminded me of him, you see, but I couldn’t remember his surname. We all just called him Captain Al. He always gave us little ones oranges and sweets when he came to the house – things we couldn’t get with the war on."

  She had a tendency to get to her point by way of a long, circuitous route, often criss-crossed by unimportant, totally unrelated details, but it was necessary to pay close attention, because you never knew when she would throw in something meaningful in all the nonsense.

  "I heard about the dispute over this house," she said. "And I knew there was something up here in this head of mine, but I couldn’t put it all together. Then I remembered Captain Al and I said to myself, well now…" she lowered her voice and leaned closer to Richard, "In those days things like that weren’t talked about. Unmarried girls having babies. It was all hushed up, as much as it could be, but in a village this size…"

  I could see we’d be here for a while so I put the kettle on.

  "Of course," she went on, "I was just a little thing, five or six at the time, but I remember Captain Al. He was so tall and handsome in his uniform. Came from the American military base. There was a lot of ‘em here during the war. Yanks."

  "Right." Richard was doing his best to follow along; a thin line deepening across his brow. If his arm wasn’t broken, he’d be cracking his knuckles.

  "You’re a yank too, aren’t you?" she demanded, as if he might try to deny it.

  "He’s half a yank," I said, saving him the trouble.

  "Oh?" She frowned, not quite sure about that possibility; in her mind anyone born outside the village of Sydney Dovedale was a foreigner.

  "So what happened to Captain Al?" I asked, urging her story onward.

  She looked up at me. "Lost in a plane, so they said, over the channel. One of them bombing raids."

  "Ah."

  "Went and left young Gilly Carver in a bit of a pickle." She shook her head. "Gillyflower Carver, indeed," she sniffed at the name, "got herself in trouble didn’t she, with that Captain Al. Like I said, it weren’t talked about in those days and her family sent her off somewhere to have the baby, but we all knew."

  More accustomed to people who spoke in full sentences with some continuity, Richard struggled, but I prodded her forward again. She was like an old cart with wonky wheels, getting stuck in our muddy lane, requiring frequent shoves to lurch forward a few more inches.

  "When the Captain first came over, he knew there was a house here belonging to his family, so he drove out to find it. My father had the old garage back then and that’s where the Captain stopped in for directions." She sighed, folding her arms under her plump bosom. "Then he met Gilly, of course, and they’d come here to this house together. The place was empty back then – no one had lived in it for years. We used to come up here to play as kiddies, but the big boys would frighten us with ghost stories." She shivered, looking over her shoulder. "After we heard the Captain died like that, we all believed the place were haunted by his ghost."

  The stairs creaked softly, a delayed echo of steps passing down them earlier. Perhaps.

  "And the baby?" I prompted eagerly.

  "Well, she called the baby Rose."

  "Ah." I smiled broadly at Richard.

  "And then all them years later, when young Rose married Bob – quite a bit younger than him she was and everyone was surprised – well, this house was given to her. The family said it was just a distant relative being generous. But…" She paused dramatically. "There was a rumor, some years after the war, that Captain Al weren’t dead after all. He just went back to America – to his wife — and left Gilly behind. His conscience caught up with him in the end, you see, and he gave the house to Rose, his daughter."

  Rich
ard looked uncomfortable. "How do you—?"

  "Because I finally remembered what Captain Al’s last name was," she exclaimed proudly. "It was Downing." She looked at Richard. "Just like yours."

  And so the mystery, thanks to Mrs. Tuke, was solved.

  Richard wasn’t convinced. He couldn’t recall any relative named Al, but then he’d lost contact with most of his relatives from across the Atlantic and hadn’t spoken with his estranged father in more than fifteen years.

  "So there you are," I said to him when she finally left, "the house was given to Aunt Rose, just like I told you." Watching Mrs. Tuke through the window, I saw her turn and wink at me, giving the thumbs up sign. I waved hastily, glad he wasn’t looking.

  "That may be so," he replied, idly thumbing through a magazine with his good hand, "but my legal documents would hold more weight in court than the ponderous ramblings of Old Mother Hubbard." He threw me a sideways glance. "For all I know you could have cooked that fairytale up, like one of your stories, and had her recite it."

  Damn it. "If you’re so intent on taking me to court to evict me, why don’t you go ahead?" I yelled. "Why are you still hanging around me like an ill-fitting suit, and offering me the full, unrestricted use of your toiletries?"

  He looked up. "I told you we can work something out. There’s no need to get all dramatic again."

  "I don’t trust you. How do I know you won’t change your mind? And…and why would you suddenly just capitulate and let me stay here? I thought all you cared about was the money – well, you won’t get much out of me."

  He waited until I paused for a breath and then said evenly, "You have my word on it. The house is yours. I don’t want to fight with you anymore. Can I put it any plainer?"

  "Why?" I demanded crossly. "What do you want from me?"

  "Your body, of course. What do you think I’m still here for?"

  "Very funny, Downing. How much do you want?"