A Passionate Affair

‘Not really.’ Chris made a deprecatory gesture. ‘He had a marvellous use of colour, which I admire, and which no one else has successfully been able to imitate. And besides,’ he shrugged irrepressively, ‘I watched a programme about him on television, a couple of nights ago.’

Cassandra made a face and flung a pencil at him as Chris ducked back to his drawing board. He laughed and resumed his seat, and leaving her own, Cassandra came to look over his shoulder.

‘Hey, that’s good!’ she exclaimed, pulling her spectacles out of their case and sliding them on to her nose so that she could look more closely. She had discovered she was long-sighted only two months before, when after a series of headaches she had sought professional advice. In consequence, she now wore wide hornrims when she was working, and their size gave an added charm to her pale oval features.

Chris glanced sideways at her, his blue eyes alight with enthusiasm. ‘Do you think so?’ he asked. ‘Do you really think so? You don’t think I’ve gone over the top with all this dark oak and heavy wallpaper?’

‘Of course not.’ Cassandra straightened, smiling down into his lean good-looking features. ‘Chris, they told us what they wanted. They want us to restore the house’s original character. They want oak panelling and figured damask. They want velvet curtains and leather-bound books in the library.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t suppose it really matters what the books are. You could put The Decameron up there, and they’d never notice. But,’ she grimaced, ‘so long as they’re happy, and they’re prepared to pay for it—who are we to object?’

Chris pulled thoughtfully at his nose, a habit he had when he was worried, and then looked doubtfully up at her. ‘Is that really how you feel?’ he asked, with sudden gravity, and she turned away and walked back to her desk, as if she needed to consider her response.

‘No,’ she conceded at last, perching on the edge of her desk and chewing at the earpiece of the spectacles she had removed from her nose. ‘But, Chris,’ she sighed, ‘we can only offer advice. If people refuse to take it . . .’

‘I don’t like these kind of jobs,’ declared Chris flatly. ‘I prefer it when we’re given a free hand to use the ability that they’re paying for!’

‘Well, so do I,’ exclaimed Cassandra impatiently. ‘But we’re not in business to create works of art, Chris. And every now and then we have to take a job we don’t like.’

Chris hunched his shoulders. ‘Well, why the hell did the Steiners employ a firm of interior designers, if they already knew what they wanted? Why didn’t they just contract the job out to some painting and decorating company, who’d do a perfectly competent job—–’

‘Chris, you know why. The Steiners like the idea of—–’

‘—using our name, I know.’

‘Not just that.’ Cassandra was honest. ‘Any firm of interior designers would do just as well. Only—oh, I suppose they thought we might be more amenable.’

‘Because we’re just establishing ourselves,’ said Chris drily, and Cassandra nodded.

‘I guess so. Anyway, Liz said—–’

‘Liz!’ Chris made a sound of derision. ‘Just tell Liz from me we’ll get our own commissions from now on, will you?’

‘Mmm.’

Cassandra’s thoughtful response was almost inaudible as she slid off the desk and walked round it to resume her seat. Chris’s indignation had struck a slightly distasteful chord in her memory, and she would have preferred not to remember Liz’s canvassing of her talents that afternoon. As well as rekindling her embarrassment, it brought Jay Ravek’s face too acutely to mind, and her own reactions to his dark intelligent features. She had found him attractive, but then what woman wouldn’t? He was tall, but not too tall; lean, but not skinny; and although he was not strictly handsome he possessed the kind of personal magnetism one could only describe as sex appeal. His eyes were almost black and deep-set, accentuating the heavy lids with their short thick lashes. His nose was straight between high cheek-bones, and his mouth with its thin upper lip and fuller lower one could look both cruel and sensuous.

Cassandra expelled her breath suddenly and pushed her spectacles back on to her nose. He had certainly made an impression, she thought, with a wry grimace. Liz would be horrified if she ever found out just how attractive Cassandra had found him, and her mother-hen qualities would be fully aroused at what she would see as the evidence of Cassandra’s vulnerability.

But it wasn’t true, Cassandra thought impatiently. Since Mike’s death she had met plenty of attractive men, not least Chris himself, who, despite his married state, had made it plain that he still found her as attractive as ever. If she had waited before committing herself to any further emotional entanglements, it was not because she was scared of getting hurt again. On the contrary, she doubted there was a man alive who could hurt her now. Her marriage to Mike had been a disaster, but it had also taught her more about relationships than any other experience could have done. She had entered into that marriage innocently, optimistically, eagerly—and within six months she had been shocked, bruised and disillusioned. Her immature expectations of what a marriage should be had been shattered by the kind of experiences she would have preferred to forget. Mike should never have got married. He liked the company of women far too much; and not just one woman, but many. Later, in her more cynical moments, Cassandra had wondered whether his constant search for satisfaction with women stemmed from his own inability to give satisfaction, and she had been grateful then for his accusations of her frigidity, which meant she was not obliged to suffer his attentions too often. She did not believe she was frigid, however. She had a perfectly normal interest in the opposite sex. If she had never truly enjoyed the act of love, that was not so unusual. She had friends with husbands and families who had confessed to a similar deficiency, which, she consoled herself, occurred most frequently with girls of a greater sensitivity. Her experiences were of the mind, rather than the body, she was convinced, and as she enjoyed kissing and caressing and the preliminaries of loveplay, she was unconcerned that so far as Freud was concerned she was unaroused.

It was seven o’clock before she left the office. Chris departed around six, and after he had gone, Cassandra abandoned her ideas for an office complex they had been invited to tender for, and gave herself up to the troublesome study of their accounts. Really, she thought, they would soon have to employ an accountant to keep the books in order. What with income tax returns and V.A.T. there seemed an inordinate amount of book-keeping to be done, and although the business was still in its embryo stages, someone had to ensure that they did not overreach themselves. At the moment, they had a good working relationship with a firm of interior decorators, who performed the function of translating hers and Chris’s designs into a tangible reality. But eventually Cassandra hoped to employ their own painters and plumbers and carpenters, and accomplish every project themselves, thus ruling out the necessity to rely on contracted labour.

When she finally put down her pen and switched off the pocket calculator, Cassandra’s head was buzzing with figures. She supposed that sooner or later she would get used to owing money that she herself was owed, but right now it seemed a terrifying deficit, and she massaged her temples wearily as she got up from her desk.

The studio-cum-office was situated over a pair of garages, which had once provided stabling for the horses of a bygone carriage era. Their entrance was via an iron staircase that ran up the side of the building, and after locking the door, Cassandra descended the stairs with a feeling of intense relief. It had been a long day, and she was tired, and she looked forward eagerly to putting her feet up on the couch and enjoying a T.V. dinner.

Her small Alfasud was parked in the mews, and she crossed the cobbled forecourt quickly and inserted her key in the lock. Chandler Mews was only dimly lit, and it had crossed her mind on several occasions that it was an ideal spot for muggers. But so far she had encountered no one but a stray cat, that even so had given her a nasty scare.

It was cold inside the car, but the engine fired without a hiccough, and she drove it smoothly out into Great Portland Street. At this hour of the evening, the traffic was not hectic, and she turned right towards Tottenham Court Road, and her flat near Russell Square.

She was lucky to have a flat so near to the office, and she never failed to feel grateful for Mike’s insurance, which had afforded her enough money to lease the flat and the studio, and provided the capital necessary to start the business. She had not wanted to take the money in the beginning. She had not felt she deserved it. But Mike’s mother had been adamant, and with her encouragement she had learned to appreciate her independence. She sometimes wondered whether Mrs Roland’s insistence that the money was hers and that she should take it without obligation stemmed from her own experiences with Mike’s father. Certainly, the elder Mr Roland had had little consideration for his wife, spending most of his time at the racetrack or on the golf course, and latterly, after his son’s involvement in racing, at the Formula One meetings. Unfortuately, he had died before Mike achieved any real success, and his winning of the French Grand Prix was overshadowed by his father’s death.

They were both widowed now, and it was through Mrs Roland that Cassandra had found her flat. Mike’s mother lived in an apartment in the same building, and while some of her friends had advised her not to live so closely with her in-laws, Cassandra had had no hesitation about accepting. She had never known her own mother and father. They had died when she was only a child, and she had been brought up by her mother’s cousin, a spinster lady with no aspirations to motherhood. Still, Aunt Esme, as she had preferred to be called, had done her best to give the girl a good home, and if it had been lacking in affection, it had at least given Cassandra her interest in art and design. Aunt Esme taught history at a girls’ school in Richmond, but in her spare time she devoured the art galleries, spending hours at the National Gallery or the Tate, reading avidly about painters and sculptors, their lives and their masterpieces, and the influences that coloured their work. It was during the course of these expeditions that Cassandra began to take notice of colour and texture, began to distinguish between the brush-strokes of a master and the amateurish offerings she produced. She learned that there was more to being an artist than the desire to set down on paper or canvas some face full of character, or a colourful London street scene. Her talent lay not in reproducing fine detail but in creating it, in blending together the imaginative with the functional to effect a design, both pleasing and practical. She was not an artist, she was a designer, using other people’s art to good advantage, and without Mike’s intervention in her life she might well have become a teacher, like Aunt Esme. As it was, she had given up her studies to marry Mike, and Aunt Esme had died before she achieved her ambition to have a studio of her own.

But Mike’s mother had nurtured that ambition. From the beginning she had encouraged Cassandra to think for herself, and since Mike’s death they had grown so much closer. It was strange, when there was no blood relationship between them, but Mrs Roland came much closer to being the mother she had never had than did Aunt Esme, and Cassandra had never regretted taking the flat which kept them in such close proximity.

Leaving her car in the basement garage, Cassandra took the lift up to the fourth floor with a sense of weariness out of all proportion to the day she had spent. It had seemed such an exhausting day somehow, and at the back of her mind was the suspicion that Jay Ravek had something to do with it. But that was ridiculous, she thought impatiently. She hardly knew the man. They had only exchanged the briefest of words. And yet she knew a nagging sense of disappointment that she would not be seeing him again. That was what was depressing her. He was the first man since Mike she might seriously consider having an affair with, and Liz had made that practically impossible by her vitriolic attitude. If she had not known better, she would have suspected Liz’s behaviour to be that of a jealous female, but that could not be so. Liz was a beautiful woman. She was never short of escorts. And if Jay Ravek was as dissolute as Liz said he was, he would obviously have been unable to resist the temptation.

Her flat was not large, consisting simply of a bedroom, a bathroom, a living-room and a kitchen. But it was the first real home of her own she had had, and Cassandra coveted the independence it proclaimed. It was not opulently furnished, but the choice of colours was hers, and the bright banners of green and orange revealed a character searching for its own identity.

Soft lamplight lit on a velvety orange sofa, splashing the rather austere stereo unit with warmth. Cassandra dropped her bag on to the couch, kicked off her shoes, and removed her coat before padding through to the small but stylish kitchen. She depressed the switch on the stereo unit as she passed, releasing the strains of John Lennon’s music into the apartment, and determinedly hummed to herself as she extracted her frozen dinner from the fridge. It would be foolish if she allowed thoughts of Jay Ravek to ruin what was left of the evening, she thought, putting the meal into the microwave oven to defrost before cooking. After all, her abstraction over him should warn her that he could be dangerous to her new-found peace of mind, and perhaps her first affair should be with someone who did not stir her emotions so deeply.

The telephone rang as she was making coffee, and leaving the pot percolating, she went to answer it. It was her mother-in-law, and Cassandra relaxed, perching on the arm of the sofa, and cradling the receiver against her ear.

‘You’re late, darling.’ Mrs Roland’s voice was warm with affection. ‘I called about half an hour ago, but you were still not home.’

‘I’ve been doing accounts,’ remarked Cassandra drily, and heard her mother-in-law’s sigh of understanding. ‘We really will have to employ an accountant soon. Even with a calculator, my arithmetic isn’t up to all the book-keeping we have to do.’

‘How about Paul Ludlum?’ suggested Mrs Roland at once. ‘His father was Henry’s accountant for years, and from what I hear, Paul has an excellent reputation. I could speak to him, if you like. Explain the situation. I’m sure he’s just the man you need.’

‘It sounds interesting,’ agreed Cassandra cautiously. ‘And it would take a load off my shoulders.’ She paused. ‘If we can afford it.’

‘Of course you can afford it, Cass.’ Mrs Roland was adamant. ‘You know how well the business is doing. I have every confidence in you.’

‘Well—thanks.’ Cassandra felt a glow of warmth inside. ‘You know, I’d never have had the nerve to do this without you.’

Mrs Roland chuckled. ‘It’s nice of you to say so, darling, but I don’t believe it. You’d have made it, sooner or later. Give yourself the credit, not me.’

‘Well, anyway—–’ Cassandra let the sentence speak for itself, ‘I’m about to pour myself a cup of coffee. Would you like one?’

‘Oh, darling, I can’t.’ Mrs Roland was apologetic. ‘I’m just on my way out actually. You know—it’s my bridge evening.’ And as Cassandra acknowledged this with a rueful exclamation, she went on: ‘I only rang to let you know I took a phone call for you earlier.’

‘A phone call? For me?’ Cassandra felt the first twinges of alarm. ‘Who was it? And how did you happen to get the call?’

‘It was a Mr—Ravek,’ declared her mother-in-law, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘A client, I suppose. He’d found my telephone number in the book under this address, and I assume he expected it was yours. Do you know him?’

‘I’ve—met him.’ Cassandra’s sense of apprehension was fast giving way to a state of nervous excitement. ‘Did—er—did he say what he wanted?’

‘Well, he wanted to speak to you, of course,’ replied Mrs Roland at once. ‘You sound—strange, Cass. Who is he? A boy-friend?’

‘No!’ Cassandra’s response was vehement. ‘I—hardly know him.’ She paused. ‘Did he mention why he wanted to speak to me?’

‘No.’ Her mother-in-law considered for a moment. ‘He asked if you were available, and I explained that I was the wrong Mrs Roland, and he rang off.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Cassandra could hardly keep the disappointment out of her voice. Obviously he had discovered that there was a Mrs Roland listed as living in the building, and assumed it was her. When her mother-in-law explained his mistake, no doubt he had then presumed that she lived with her husband. And as she had only occupied this flat for a little over six months, her number was not in the book. But why had he rung her anyway? And why not at the office? The possibilities were endless, and none of them gave her any satisfaction right now.

‘I told him I’d give you the message,’ Mrs Roland was saying now, and Cassandra started: ‘What message?’

‘That he’d rung, of course,’ replied her mother-in-law patiently. ‘Cass, is there something wrong? This man’s not been bothering you, has he?’