The Longest Pleasure

Rafe Fleming, for instance, she acknowledged dreamily, the corners of her generous mouth tilting in an unknowingly sensual smile. She would never have believed she would ever like him, let alone seek his company at every opportunity. Which just went to prove she had grown up at last, she decided. She could meet him now on equal terms. She was no longer the poor-little-rich-girl he loved to torment.

She supposed she must have been about four years old when she first met Rafe Fleming. Her parents had been dead for almost a year, and gradually she had begun to adapt to her new life at Castle Howarth. Things had not been so different, except that now she lived in the country, instead of in London. Miss Paget still looked after her, and as her parents had always lived full social lives, she didn’t miss them as much as she might have done. She had probably been a rather precocious child, she reflected ruefully; spoilt, certainly, and inclined to expect her own way in all things, due no doubt to the fact that she had had no brothers or sisters.

Her first encounter with Rafe took place in the gazebo. After spending a rather lonely winter couped up in the house, she had been granted permission by her grandmother to play in the gardens. Wrapped up warmly against the cool April air, she had been walking her dolls in the rose garden when she had espied the domed, ornamental roof of the summer-house. Set beyond a hedge of cypresses, it had looked exactly like an enchanted castle to the infant Helen, and it had been something of an anti-climax to find it was already occupied. A boy of perhaps ten or eleven was sprawled on the floor of the gazebo, reading, and Helen had regarded him without liking and with a definite air of superiority.

‘Who are you?’

The boy started, evidently unused to being disturbed, but with the advantage of hindsight, Helen realised he had not immediately jumped to the offensive. ‘Rafe Fleming,’ he answered. ‘Who’re you?’

‘I’m Helen Michaels. Lady Elizabeth Sinclair’s granddaughter!’ Helen remembered the words now with a grimace of distaste. ‘This is my house, and my garden. And I want you to go.’

‘Do you?’ Rafe had made no attempt to obey her childish instructions, rolling on to his back and supporting himself on his elbows, regarding her with what she now knew had been a mixture of humour and insolence. ‘Well, well! And are you going to make me?’

He had been good-looking even in those days, Helen reflected. Tall for his age, with lean features and ash-fair hair, and thin wrists jutting from the sleeves of his jerkin. But she had not realised it then. At that moment, she had wanted nothing so much as for her grandmother to appear and order him out of the summer-house. Little as she was, she knew she had no chance of displacing him herself, and the longer he lay regarding her with narrowed mocking eyes, the more frustrated she became.

‘You’re not s’posed to be here,’ she insisted, standing her ground, but Rafe was not impressed.

‘Get lost,’ he retorted, turning back to the magazine he had been reading, and it was all Helen could do not to stamp her foot in fury.

Of course, she had been obliged to leave him then, with tears welling up in her eyes and threatening to disgrace her. But she had gone straight to her grandmother and reported the matter to her, secure in the knowledge that Nan would sort it out.

However, her grandmother had proved to have a blind spot where Rafe Fleming was concerned. ‘I expect you startled him,’ she assured her indignant granddaughter, after drying Helen’s tears and consoling her with a stick of aniseed. ‘After all, Rafe has lived at Castle Howarth most of his life, and I suppose he feels he has a privileged position. His father works for me, you see, darling, and until you came, there were no other children on the estate.’

Helen didn’t see how that gave him the right to order her about, but her grandmother would not be pressed, and in the weeks and months that followed, her resentment grew. He always seemed to be around when she didn’t want him, teasing her and mocking her, and making fun of her, particularly when she attempted to put him in his place. That first encounter had set the seal on their relationship, and nothing she could say or do could change the situation. Which was a pity because she liked Mr Fleming, her grandmother’s estate manager, and Rafe’s adopted father.

She had learned Rafe was adopted quite by accident one afternoon, when she came upon her grandmother talking to him by the lily pond. Lady Elizabeth was asking how he was getting on at school, and Rafe was admitting, not without some aggression, that he wasn’t interested in education.

‘Why not?’ Lady Elizabeth wanted to know, and Helen, crouched behind the rhododendrons, listened with some amazement to his reply.

‘Why should I be?’ he had countered indifferently, plucking the head off one of the blooms hanging above his head, and shredding its delicate petals. ‘You don’t need any brains to plough a field or muck out the cowshed! What do I want with learning? I can pick up all I need to know right here.’

Helen had been shocked that he should dare to speak to her grandmother so insolently. She had waited in anticipation for Lady Elizabeth to tell him to apologise, maybe even to box his ears—an expression Paget was prone to use, when referring to a more corporal form of punishment—but her grandmother did neither. Instead, she had laid a hand on Rafe’s shoulder, and said quietly:

‘You’re going to Kingsmead, and there’s an end of it. The Flemings may have adopted you, but you are not going to waste the brain God has given you. I’ve spoken to Tom. Term starts in September. Be ready.’

After that, Helen had some peace, in term time at least. Kingsmead, she learned, was the local boys’ public school, and although Rafe did not board, he was too busy with homework and school activities to spend much time baiting her. For her part, she attended a kindergarten in the nearby town of Yelversley, and then, when she was old enough, she was sent to a girls’ school in Kent.’

‘Why do I have to board?’ she had objected, when she first learned of her grandmother’s plans. ‘Rafe Fleming doesn’t. Why can’t I go to Ladymead?’

‘Because you are my granddaughter, and your mother went to St Agnes,’ replied Lady Elizabeth firmly. ‘Now, run along and take Hector for a walk, there’s a good girl. He’s getting fat and lazy, and I don’t have the energy to take him out as often as I should.’

Hector was her grandmother’s pekinese, a fluffy scrap of orange-coloured fur, who could still terrorise the postman when he chose. Curiously enough, the dog had never gone for Rafe’s ankles, even though he had called Hector a lot of unsavoury names. He preferred real dogs, he once told her, when she had run across him exercising his father’s golden retriever at the same time she was taking Hector for a walk. Not poor imitations, he had added, laughing at her flushed resentful face, and Helen had wished she had a Dobermann, with all the instincts of a killer.

Then, three years ago, Rafe had gone to university in Warwick. To begin with, Helen had not noticed much difference. He was still home for the holidays when she was—at Christmas and Easter, at least—and although at Christmas they didn’t have much contact, she had been aware of him watching her with a distinctly jaundiced eye, when she helped her grandmother distribute the gifts at the party Lady Elizabeth gave for the estate workers. Helen knew he would not have been there at all had her grandmother not asked him to help with the tree. But she had, and afterwards he had been obliged to stay, unable to make his escape without offending the old lady.

The Easter following, he was home again, but this time he was not alone. He had brought another young man with him; one of his friends from college, her grandmother informed her, after granting the boys permission to use the tennis court. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Helen?’ she ventured, as an afterthought. ‘I’m sure they’d give you a game, too, if you asked them.’

Helen would have cut off her right arm before asking Rafe Fleming for anything, but her grandmother was not to know that. So far as the old lady was concerned, their initial antagonism towards one another had long since been forgotten, and Helen knew she would have been most disturbed if she had suspected the hatred her granddaughter still felt towards the young man she obviously favoured. Though why her grandmother should favour Rafe, when he treated her so offhandedly, Helen couldn’t imagine. She could only assume it was her friendship with Tom Fleming that gave his adopted son such licence.

When she arrived home for the summer holidays, however, Helen discovered Rafe was not there. He had taken a job in France for three months, her grandmother told her, a faint trace of disapproval in her voice, and Helen guessed the old lady was disappointed because he had not chosen to work for her.

For her part, Helen had mixed emotions. She was delighted Rafe was not to be around, of course, but she bitterly regretted the impulse she had had to invite one of her schoolfriends to spend the vacation with her. Tracy Grant’s mother was dead, and her father lived and worked in Central America. Because there was trouble there at the moment, Mr Grant had suggested Tracy should spend the holiday at school, and Helen had seized on Tracy’s dilemma as the solution to her problems.

However, once she discovered Rafe was not to be around, Helen’s doubts took root. She discovered there was a world of difference between a friendship formed in school—compounded by school activities and school discipline—and one that relied on a genuine liking for one another and a shared enjoyment of mutual interests.

Helen and Tracy, it transpired, had little in common. Having been brought up in the country, Helen enjoyed country pursuits. She rode well; she enjoyed taking long walks with the dogs; she had a natural love of nature. Tracy didn’t. Her interest in animals only stretched to the mink coat she intended to own one day, and horses frankly terrified her.

Helen liked sports, too. She played hockey and tennis at school; she belonged to the local squash club; and she had even learned how to play golf, after accompanying her grandmother to the club for the past three years. Which was just as well, she had reflected on occasion. Having a weakness for stodgy foods, she found getting plenty of exercise helped to alleviate its effects, and she often put on leg-warmers and a leotard and worked-out until her body was soaked with sweat.

Tracy, meanwhile, was unnaturally thin, and any kind of physical activity bored her. She liked nothing so much as to lie on the couch watching television all day, eating sweets, or surreptitiously puffing on the forbidden cigarettes she bought at the shop in town. She would have bought them in the village, except that Helen had objected. She knew if her grandmother discovered Tracy smoked there would be the devil to pay, and she seemed to spend her time that summer flapping her arms in rooms where Tracy had been, trying to get rid of the smoke.

The worst moment had come when Rafe had arrived home the weekend before all of them were due to return to their studies. He had obviously turned up to spend a few days with his parents before going back to college, but apparently he felt obliged to come up to the house to see Lady Elizabeth.

It was a wet day at the end of September, and for once Helen was confined to the house, too. Tracy had been watching television, as usual, but she had joined Helen on the window-seat only moments before Rafe came riding up the drive on his motorbike. Helen hadn’t even known he had a motorbike, and she watched with almost as much interest as Tracy as he flicked down the metal rest and parked the bike on the gravelled forecourt before approaching the house.

He was wearing leathers, and the slick black material suited his dark complexion. As he crossed the forecourt, he tipped his chin and removed the concealing helmet, and Tracy’s lips parted as his silky thatch of silvery pale hair was revealed.

‘Who’s that?’ she exclaimed, pressing her face against the windows, and as she did so, Rafe looked up and saw them. Helen wanted to die at the look of derision that marred his lean features as he recognised her. Then, he lifted his hand in a mocking salute before disappearing through the gate that led into the yard at the back of the building.

She didn’t see him again, even though Tracy grew very impatient at her obstinacy. ‘Just because you’ve got some kind of grudge against him doesn’t mean I can’t find him attractive, does it?’ she argued angrily. ‘The first decent boy I’ve seen since I came to this dump, and you won’t even introduce me!’

‘Introduce yourself,’ retorted Helen tightly, holding on to her temper with difficulty. ‘And in case you hadn’t noticed, he’s not a boy; he’s a man! He’s nineteen, Tracy. Hardly likely to be interested in a kid of thirteen!’

The Christmas after, Helen herself didn’t come home. She spent the holiday skiing in Switzerland, and then joined her grandmother at an hotel in London for a long weekend before returning to St Agnes. At Easter, she didn’t see Rafe at all, and the summer after that, Rafe again found employment on the continent.

By the time this summer had come round, Helen had begun to believe there was to be no further contact between herself and Rafe Fleming. Oh, she had occasionally seen him when she was home, but only from a distance, and it was years since they had had any real conversation. He was twenty-one now, of course, and probably past the age when he could take a delight in making fun of her. In any case, she was older too, and she firmly believed that nothing he said could ever affect her again.

Until this summer, that is. Chewing ruminatively on the straw between her teeth, Helen had to admit that she had been wrong. But wrong in the nicest possible way, she amended. From the minute she had seen him at Yelversley station, sent, he told her, by her grandmother to meet her off the train, she had been aware of him in a way that was entirely new to her. To date, she had had little to do with the opposite sex, and she had listened with wonder to the stories her schoolfriends told about boys they had gone out with. It had seemed to her a great deal of fuss over nothing, and she had adapted to her maturing body’s needs without even considering the emotional upheaval taking place inside her. But that was before she met Rafe again.

It had all been so amazing, thought Helen now, wrapping her arms about herself in an excess of excitement. She had been dismayed when she saw him, and yet as soon as he spoke to her, as soon as he showed he didn’t regard her as a child any longer, everything had changed.

Of course, she had been suspicious at first. Who wouldn’t be? The boy who had pulled her hair and hid her toys and called her names was still too fresh in her thoughts. But when Rafe spoke to her openly and without malice, when the mocking smile he always seemed to wear in her presence didn’t appear, she started to relax, and her burgeoning femininity could not remain immune to his undoubted sexual attraction.

And he was attractive, she reflected, her breathing quickening as it always did when she contemplated his lean physique. He was tall, about six feet, she surmised, with a taut muscled body that looked good in the thin cotton shirts and tight-fitting jeans he wore about the estate. Because he had worked outdoors all summer, his skin was darkly tanned, a stunning contrast to the ash-pale lightness of his hair.

He was really dishy—that was the expression Sandra Venables had used when Helen overheard her discussing Rafe with Mrs Pride, the cook. Sandra was her grandmother’s new maid, and Helen didn’t really like her. She was too sly; too knowing; too conscious of her own appearance, which Helen grudgingly had to admit was quite something. Small, no more than five foot one or two, Sandra made up for her lack of height in other ways. She had a narrow waist and shapely legs, and the most enormous breasts Helen had ever seen. Top-heavy, thought Helen disdainfully, viewing her own more modest curves with some resignation. Nevertheless, she envied the other girl’s self-confidence, and she suspected she would never have the courage to wear the bodice of her dress unbuttoned so that the dusky shadow between her breasts could be clearly seen.

Helen had noticed Sandra always took particular notice of her appearance when Mrs Pride asked her to take a flask of tea out to Billy Dobkins, the gardener. Not that Billy Dobkins would notice how she looked. He was too old and crippled with arthritis to pay attention to anyone except himself. But he had a son; young Billy, he was called, though Helen knew he was in his thirties now and married himself. He sometimes came to help his father, to supplement the wages he earned driving a delivery truck for the local supermarket, and Helen had surmised that it was young Billy who had attracted Sandra’s interest.

She really was man-crazy, decided Helen, not liking the direction of her thoughts. The other girl might only be a couple of years older than she was, but Sandra was years older in experience. She probably knew more about boys now than she ever would, reflected Helen ruefully. But, she had a mind to change at least a part of that—with Rafe’s assistance.

Of course, she wasn’t at all sure her grandmother would approve of what she planned to do. It was one thing to encourage her and Rafe to be friends, and quite another to accept the fact that her granddaughter was attracted to the son of her estate manager. And yet, Lady Elizabeth never seemed to object when she and Rafe were together. Because Rafe was working at the home-farm, he was often about, and Helen had fallen into the habit of always making herself available whenever he was around. They had even played tennis together once or twice—though he always beat her—and her grandmother occasionally invited him to tea, to discuss his future now that he had got his degree.

On those occasions, Helen had been quite content to sit and listen, drinking in the sight of his lazily attractive features, imagining how he would react if she reached out and ran her fingers through the sometimes unruly thickness of his hair. Not that she ever let him see how she was feeling. If he looked in her direction, she invariably averted her eyes, hoping with an urgency bordering on panic that her grandmother would attribute her flushed cheeks to the unusually warm weather. Nevertheless, she did gain a great deal of pleasure from just looking at him, and if Rafe was aware of her covert appraisal, he gave no sign of it.

In spite of her absorption with his appearance, Helen also learned quite a lot about him during those outdoor gatherings. Because she had never asked, she had not known the subjects he had been studying at university, but now she discovered he had gained a double first in biological sciences, which evidently endorsed the faith her grandmother had had in him all those years before. What was less palatable to accept was the news that he had been offered a job with a chemical company in the north of England, and that as soon as the holidays were over, he would be moving away from Castle Howarth. Which meant she had less than two weeks left to make him as aware of her as she was of him, she realised hollowly. If only she had more experience; if only she was as sexy as Sandra.

Drawing a steadying breath now, she glanced round the empty stackyard. It was deserted, as she had expected, the men who had been haymaking all afternoon retiring to the farmhouse kitchen where Mrs Robinson, the farmer’s wife, would be reviving them with mugs of beer and plates of her home-made scones. Helen’s mouth watered at the thought of Mrs Robinson’s home-made scones, but she put the thought aside. She was aware she had eaten too many fattening things these holidays already, and her shorts were infinitely tighter now than they had been at the end of July.