To Catch A Unicorn Page 8

  "Don't scream!" he hissed with mock melodrama. "Big Brother's just across there in the book-room and in no tender humour after that dratted picnic. He interrupted some unfinished business between us this morning—remember?"

  She had forgotten that it was only this morning that he had kissed her so violently, but she did not struggle now, remembering that this was what he expected and hoped for. She kept her eyes on the unicorn prancing in proud disdain on the top of the cabinet and said coolly:

  "Haven't you showed off enough for one day?"

  "" O-ho!" laughed Peregrine, delighted, and Dominic's voice across the hall interrupted with deceptive mildness.

  "Up to your old tricks again, Perry? Why don't you pick on someone your own size? Come in here, I want to talk to you. Laura, you'd.be better employed in the nursery till supper's ready. The boy may be needing you."

  Rather to Laura's surprise, Peregrine let her go without comment, and she turned tail and ran up the staircase.

  Dominic closed the door of the book-room behind them and reached for a half-finished drink which stood on the desk.

  "Help yourself. We might as well have this out in comparative sociability," he said, gesturing towards the decanter.

  Peregrine poured a stiff whisky, and propped himself against the desk, gazing moodily at the books which lined the walls and which none of them read. He never felt at ease in this room which by tacit consent had become bis brother's study and office. He and Bella seldom used it, and Dominic's habit of retiring here in the evening to work had become an established custom.

  "Perry—" Dominic was saying. "I don't want to rake up old sores or make any more bad blood between us, but you've got to differentiate between your waterfront floozies and guests staying in this house."

  "Oh, come off it, Dom!" Peregrine blustered. "A bit of slap and tickle doesn't hurt anyone. The kid is probably grateful for a little attention—she's not the sort to attract the boys like honey."

  "Fancying yourself as the answer to a maiden's prayer?" Dominic asked without much change of tone, but Peregrine knew the signs; the little pulse suddenly visible at the side of his mouth, the scar beginning to whiten as it had that afternoon. There were times when it didn't pay to drive the boss too hard.

  "All right, all right," he said hastily. "So I act the goat at times; Bella's spoilt me as she spoilt Troy, and you've had all the responsibility and none of the fun—I've heard it all before and it's probably true. You should have married, Dom, then we'd have had a good woman keeping us up to scratch, the patter of tiny feet instead of a pack of mangy curs, and the neighbours would have called."

  His brother smiled involuntarily and refilled his glass.

  "Yes, I've been remiss," he said with faint irony. "Penzion needs a more civilized life, no doubt."

  "And heirs," said Peregrine slyly. "But don't fret on that score; the old man was knocking on for sixty when he got spliced, so you've plenty of time. Besides, you've got Troy's brat to fall back on if you prefer to remain celibate."

  "That's not the same."

  "He's the same blood and the old man's only grandchild." "Well, we'll leave that subject, if you don't mind. What

  were you saying to Laura?"

  "Oh, that? I was only teasing." Peregrine shrugged.

  "Have I got to point out again that you're not dealing with the class of girl you're used to?" There was a sudden bite in Dominic's voice and his blue eyes were frosty. "I will not have you amusing yourself at that child's expense while she's under my roof—understand? She's not up to your weight, and still wet behind the ears."

  "Arouses the protective instinct in you, does she? I was saying as much to Cleo this afternoon, and she didn't much like it," Peregrine said, his eyes brightening as he considered fresh possibilities for amusement. "I read somewhere that in a certain type of man, the protective instinct is the male essence, the springboard of sex, so to speak, and you, my dear Dom, have all the earmarks of custodian and overlord."

  "For God's sake stop talking a load of half-baked claptrap picked up from the trick-cyclists!" Dominic snapped.

  "All right, all right," said Peregrine again. "Don't let my babbling drive you to extremes out of mistaken chivalry as once before—your ewe lamb's in no danger from me, so long as the delectable widow's around. Now, there is a wench up to my weight, or even yours, and no one could call the fair Cleo wet behind the ears—o-ho! That's struck a spark, has it? Had you got a speculative eye on our glamorous sister-in-law yourself?"

  He saw at once he had gone too far, as the warning signs appeared again in his brother's face.

  "Yes, you've struck a spark, though I doubt it's the one you intended," Dominic said quite quietly. "I'm quite aware, in my rational moments, that it gives you a childish pleasure to see how far you can go with me, but it's time you grew up, Perry. Drinking and wenching around is all very well for cutting your teeth, but there are other things."

  "Our dear old dad hardly stopped when he'd cut his teeth, judging by the family resemblances to be seen around in these parts," said Peregrine. "I'm only carrying on the tradition."

  "Whatever excesses the old man indulged in outside Penzion, the business came first," Dominic said sharply.

  "Meaning I don't pull my weight?"

  "Well, you don't, do you? Troy had no personal pride in the quarry, and neither have you. It's just an easy living."

  "Easy? Hard manual labour, sweat and dust and eternal blasting?"

  "Scarcely an accurate picture, is it? Neither you nor Troy started at the bottom as I did. It might have been better if you had. The old man made a mistake. If you'd worked with the men as I did, you might have shared some of Dad's pride in the business. He had to work his way up and so did his father before him."

  "So you inherited the family obsession along with the largest holdings by virtue of starting at the bottom!"

  "Well, there's a certain measure of justice in that, I would have thought, though what virtue there is in the matter is simply the accident of being born the eldest. That's really what irks you, isn't it—that I hold the largest shares?"

  Peregrine shrugged and looked sulky.

  "Well, you own the ruddy joint, as well as Penzion—not even a partnership," he said, and Dominic replied with kindly patience:

  "Well, let's face it, you wouldn't want the responsibility any more than Troy did. I pay you a reasonable salary and your shares pay good dividends. What more do you want?"

  "Oh, belt up, Dom!" Peregrine exclaimed. "You know you enjoy cracking the whip. If you didn't you'd have bought me out."

  The hardness returned to Dominic's face and he said shortly:

  "I couldn't afford to at the time, as you well know. There were heavy death duties after Dad died, and we're only just recovering. Incidentally, I've paid your gambling debts a good few times, so why should you grouse?"

  "Well, you could afford it now; Troy's share, after all, was ploughed back into the business, so that should help. I wouldn't mind having a bash at Australia."

  "Troy left a son," Dominic said, and his brother looked up quickly.

  "So you are going to do something for the brat, are you?" he said. "That should brighten his mother's provocative eyes. Pity the little blighter hasn't taken to you."

  "I'm not, I've come to the conclusion, a person who inspires great liking in the young," Dominic replied a little bitterly, and Cleo pushed open the door.

  "This is where you've all got to, is it? I've been drinking all alone in the tea-room and feel quite woozy," she said, her eyes darting from one to the other of them with mischievous curiosity. "Who doesn't like you, Dom? Has my tiresome son been rude again, or has Laura been showing a reluctance for your company? When I met her just now, she said rather acidly she had been sent upstairs to her proper place in the nursery."

  "Yes, well ... perhaps I was a little abrupt," Dominic replied, and she pricked up her ears at the note of regret in his voice.

  "Well then, you can make your peace, b
ecause here she is," she said cosily as she saw her cousin hesitating just outside the door. "Come in, darling. Dominic won't eat you, whatever he may have said to upset you. Say your party piece, Dom."

  Laura came into the room, her eyes avoiding Dominic but otherwise quite composed. She gave a quick look at Peregrine, suspecting he had been on the mat for his foolish behaviour, and smiled at him uncertainly. Dominic thought she looked like a little girl silently condoling with another caught in the same misdemeanour, as he watched her, with her full skirt swinging as she walked sedately and a ribbon round her head holding back the soft fall of hair.

  "There's only whisky in here, so let's go back to the other room and have a quick one before Bella calls us," he said, and Laura was relieved that he had ignored Cleo's proffered goad and taken no notice of her.

  Supper was one of Bella's more haphazard efforts. Bella's cooking, Laura had already discovered, was either excellent or consisted on more forgetful occasions of a curious if interesting selection of offerings which might or might not go round the family. Tonight was one of them and gave Peregrine the

  excuse he wanted to leave the table.

  "Come on," he said to Cleo, "we'll go and find a bite of something in Merrynporth. Any takers? Dom, you'll be working, I suppose. Laura?"

  She did not want to make an unwanted third, knowing Cleo's expectations of the evening, but neither did she wish to be left alone with Dominic, who might or might not decide to shut himself up in the book-room as usual, but he was already getting up from the table with a murmured excuse to Bella, so she shook her head.

  When they had all gone she became very conscious of the silence of the house and the fact that the day had been long and fraught with explosive interludes. She wished she had thought to slip into the book-room before Dominic and borrow something to read, but she would look in on Nicky instead because she liked to watch him sleeping, then go early to bed.

  The door of the book-room was open as she crossed the hall and she paused to pet the old hound, Rowley, who shuffled up to her for attention. When she looked up again, Dominic was standing in the open doorway watching her.

  "He's taken quite a shine to you, hasn't he?" he said. "Poor old dog—he probably craves for a bit of affection. Don't we all?"

  "Do you?" she asked, sounding surprised.

  "Oh, yes. They say what you've never had you don't miss, but it's not strictly true, do you think?"

  "No, but you have to give as well as receive."

  "Very true, Miss Prunes and Prisms. Some of us, though, have to be shown the way. Were you going to bed?"

  "In a little while. I was going to the nursery first. I like watching children sleep," she replied, and was surprised when he asked if he might come up with her.

  They stood together in the old nursery looking down at the sleeping child, and Laura, glancing at Dominic's grave profile, surprised a fleeting expression of pain.

  "He's very like you all, isn't he?" she whispered, seeing again the early stamp of heritage in the sleeping face, the

  indisputable blood tie which must have marked Dominic's own features as he lay sleeping in this same nursery.

  "He's like Troy," he answered, as if repudiating her unspoken comparison, and the boy stirred and flung up an arm. Dominic stepped back quickly for fear of frightening him should he wake, and Laura bent over him with reassuring murmurings, but her hands were careless tucking his arm back under the bedclothes and the child woke.

  "Moo-moo!" he said in delighted discovery. Her presence in the middle of the night could, he knew, be turned to advantage in the matter of a story if he was cunning.

  "Who's that?" he asked, catching sight of the tall figure standing back in the shadows.

  "Your Uncle Dom come to say goodnight," said Laura firmly, and prayed for Dominic's sake that there would be no scene.

  "Do you know that when I was a little boy I used to sleep in this very bed with a night-light just like you?" Dominic said with admirable quickness, and sat down on the bed.

  "Did you?" said Nicky, his eyes growing round. He was either still half asleep, thought Laura, or too astonished by the thought that his uncle had once been a little boy to take his usual exception to the visitor.

  "Yes," Dominic said, casually stroking back a disordered black lock. "That used to be my rocking-horse over there. I called him Conker."

  "Did you ride him, Uncle Dom?" asked Nicky, and his awestruck tones of incredulity so voiced Laura's own preposterous mental picture of the very adult Dominic Trevayne riding a rocking-horse that she burst out laughing. Nicky promptly joined in, sharing a splendid joke that of course couldn't be true, and Dominic said with mild affront:

  "What's so funny? I was a very skilful rider in those days, let me tell you, young man, though I did rock myself into the washstand one day, I remember, and broke the best water-jug."

  "Did you? And was your nanny cross?"

  "I didn't have a nanny. My mother looked after me, and

  she wasn't often cross," Dominic told him gently, and the boy's face clouded.

  "Cleo is. She gets angry if I break something," he said.

  "Well, I expect she has cause sometimes. Have you always called her Cleo?"

  "Oh yes. She says 'Mummy' sounds cissy and would date her."

  "And do you know what that means?" "No," Nicky said indifferently. "Will you tell me a story, Uncle Dom?"

  "Well, now, I don't know that I'm a very good hand at stories. What about asking Moo-moo?"

  "No, you tell me," the child insisted, and Laura gave him a little nod of encouragement.

  He began a story, half legend, half fairy-tale, haltingly at first and a little self-conscious, but the boy's entranced eyes never left his face, and only at the end when sleep became too much for him to fight any longer could he bear to close them.

  Dominic tucked him up, dropped a light kiss on his forehead and followed Laura softly from the room.

  "You see?" she said, looking up at him with shining eyes. "That's a beginning. You had exactly the right touch with him, Dominic, and I was proud of you."

  "How absurd and rather sweet you are," he said, but the tender amusement faded from his face as he added: "What I've gained tonight I shall lose tomorrow, I don't doubt. I haven't Perry's gift of sustaining popularity."

  "That's a defeatist attitude," she told him severely, "and Peregrine only does it to annoy."

  "Because he knows it teases! Oh yes, I'm well aware of that, but I didn't think you were."

  "Didn't you, Dominic? I think you give me less credit than you should where your brother's concerned."

  He looked down at her with a small, slightly worried frown.

  "Perhaps I do," he said. "Laura, if I spoke sharply to you earlier this evening, I hope you didn't think—"

  "I didn't think anything, Dominic," she said. "I'm—I'm

  just beginning to know you a little, I believe."

  "Are you, Laura? Well, if I bite again, just give me a kick on the shins. Now I must go down and do some work. Goodnight."

  Nicky, in the days that followed, came to a proud liking for Penzion itself, and listening to his childish boasts that this was his home for ever and ever, Laura experienced a pang on her own account. She could not altogether curb a strange, awakening affection in herself for the place which had at first seemed so alien.

  March had already slipped into April, and for the first time she began to think distastefully of the florists and tea-shops, the hostels which had always seemed adequate with an illusion of home, the few friends who, like herself, had no roots but were content in the contemplation of marriage or careers to make them whole persons.

  "Perhaps," she said aloud on one occasion when these thoughts struck her more forcibly than usual, "one can never be really a whole person as a single unit."

  She had not entirely given way to the habit of talking to herself, for she had heard someone come out to the stable yard where she was sunning herself on the old mounting block, an
d thought it was Bella, but it was Dominic who answered.

  "Have you discovered that truth so early?" he enquired, and sat down beside her.

  "Hullo ..." she said a little blankly. "You're back early, aren't you? I don't think lunch is nearly ready."

  "I had to go over the other side of the moor on some business and didn't think it was worthwhile going back to the works till after lunch," he said. "Why do you so often seem uneasy with me, Laura?"

  She picked at a bit of moss, avoiding his eyes.

  "I don't know," she said, too direct to try and evade the question with polite denials, and he smiled.

  "Perhaps you share Nicky's distrust," he said, and she looked up quickly.

  "Oh no! I would trust you with my life," she said absurdly, and a faint twinkle appeared in his very blue eyes.

  "Would you, now? That's very encouraging," he said with appropriate gravity, and she laughed.

  "That was an awfully silly reply to make, wasn't it? Like the heroine in an old-fashioned novel," she said a little ruefully. "And Nicky doesn't distrust you, you know. He's just not old enough to distinguish between worth and—and glitter."

  "What a very odd thing to say. One must take it from that, one presumes, that you are old enough!"

  "Oh, yes. My Auntie Ho was a spinster and not very young, but she had a quite definite set of values."

  "Had she indeed?"

  "Yes, she had. That—" said Laura, eyeing him rather warily "—is the answer to your question, if you want to know."

  "What, for heaven's sake! Which question? And how the hell does your Auntie Flo come into it?"

  "She doesn't. It was the way you answered—the way you so often talk to me—rather as if I were Nicky. That's what makes me uneasy, sometimes."

  "Oh, I see. You shouldn't, you know, take everything at face value—I think I've told you that before. One puts up such defences as seem proper."

  "Defences—against me?"

  "Well, you see, I'm not very used to young women stopping under my roof, so I'm probably not good at small talk."