A Nanny Named Nick

Nick could not believe for a moment that Dave’s sister owned this place. A new house this size in Balmain, down near the water, would cost the earth! Journalists, unless of the famous television variety, did not earn enormous salaries.

Which turned his mind to the mysterious Madge. Was she a wealthy girlfriend with whom Linda lived? One of those sleekly groomed and glamorous women who believed you could never be too rich or too thin?

Nick pressed the bell on the super-stylish recessed door and waited for Madge to show her wares. He kept a superbly straight face when a very plump elderly lady answered the door. She had short grey permed hair and was puffing with exertion, probably from hurrying down the steep staircase Nick could see behind her.

When she looked him up and down with a hint of old-fashioned disapproval in her narrowed eyes, Nick was glad he’d left his leather jacket and gloves stuffed in his rucksack on the back of his bike. He didn’t think he looked too disreputable in jeans and a white T-shirt, though nothing could hide his unshaven state—which seemed to be capturing Madge’s critical attention.

Nick was glad the Harley was out of sight as well. He’d left it on the other side of the high, cement-rendered wall which enclosed the block and hid the offending lawn from the street.

‘Nick, is it?’ she speculated at last.

‘That’s me.’ He smiled, having slotted her happily into the role of maiden aunt or pensioner boarder. Much better than lesbian lover. ‘And you must be Madge!’

His easy smile seemed to do the trick. She smiled back, all her earlier wariness disappearing.

‘Yes, it is. My, but it’s hot out here, isn’t it?’

‘Sure is.’

‘Come inside. Would you like a cool drink before you start on the lawn? Or should I lead you straight through to the garage and the mower?’

‘I think I’d better mow first and drink afterwards. I wouldn’t be surprised if it storms later.’

She peered past his shoulder up at the clear blue sky. ‘Really? Oh, I hope not. Linda will be so disappointed if it rains. She wants to serve dinner out on the back terrace tonight.’

Maybe Madge is a cook, Nick reassessed.

‘Come through this way,’ she said, and bustled off to her right.

Nick followed, closing the front door against the hot afternoon sun and quickly heading in Madge’s wide wake. The downstairs interior was pleasantly cool and had one of those open-plan designs, with polished parquet floors, high ceilings and no doors, only tall, wide archways.

Nick glanced around as they moved into a huge rectangular living room which was divided into two distinct areas by three wide wooden steps. In the middle of the closest area, sitting on a multicoloured Persian rug, was a very expensive-looking black leather sofa with matching lounge chairs grouped around a glass-topped coffee table.

Down the dividing steps, in the slightly smaller sunken area, rested a matching glass-topped dining table surrounded by six black leather chairs. A huge black stone figurine of a panther crouched in the centre of the table top. Even from a distance the big cat looked both original and priceless.

Other than that one piece, however, there were no other objets d’art in the sparsely furnished area. No sculptures in the bare corners. No paintings on the stark white walls, which were only broken by a fireplace framed in black ironwork.

Still, Nick liked the stark simplicity of the decor. He’d never been one for clutter.

‘Nice place,’ he murmured.

‘Linda hasn’t finished decorating the downstairs yet. But it’s going to be lovely.’

Nick absorbed this information with a degree of surprise, for it certainly sounded as if Dave’s sister did own this house. You didn’t go to so much trouble decorating a rented establishment. Had she won the lottery? Or been a workaholic since the year dot and saved all her pennies?

Perhaps she and Dave had inherited money, Nick speculated. He knew next to nothing of his friend’s finances. Just because Dave frequented a very ordinary hotel, that didn’t mean he and his sister weren’t wealthy.

But money could never buy style, and that was what this place had—style. Nick hoped that ‘finishing decorating’ didn’t mean putting curtains up at the far wall, which was ninety per cent glass and gave a spectacular view of the highly original back yard and the harbour beyond.

The block sloped very steeply at the back, the land covered by a series of flagged terraces. On the top level sat an eclectic but attractive selection of outdoor furniture flanked by huge pots full of flowering plants. Nick could imagine that sitting out there on a balmy spring evening would be very pleasant, provided it didn’t rain. But the dark clouds already gathering on the horizon did not herald well for Linda’s outdoor dinner-party plans.

‘This way,’ Madge said, opening a white door which had been well camouflaged in the white wall. It led down several steps into the double garage, which housed more crates and cardboard boxes than Nick had ever seen. No car, but there was room for one. Just. Either Linda didn’t have one or she’d driven it to work.

‘The mower’s in the corner over there,’ Madge pointed out. ‘Try not to be too noisy—I’ve just got the baby to sleep.’

Nick looked up, startled. ‘Baby? What baby?’

‘Linda’s, of course.’ Madge frowned at him, while Nick tried not to look too taken aback. ‘I thought you were a friend of the family?’

‘Not really. I’m Dave’s friend. Linda and I have never met.’

‘Oh, Dave.’ Madge pulled a face. ‘He’s been absolutely useless, that man. He acts like he’s scared stiff of Rory, but I think it’s all just a ploy to get out of babysitting.’

Nick deduced that Rory was the baby.

‘And the baby’s father?’ Nick asked, intrigued. No wonder Dave was worried about his sister. Being an unmarried mother was not uncommon these days, but it was still not an ideal situation.

Madge tut-tutted. ‘Now that’s a sad story. The baby’s father was killed—blown up by a land-mine in Cambodia. Linda was with him at the time. She’s a journalist, you know, and he was a very famous photographer. They went everywhere together. They simply lived for each other.’

Madge suddenly became a little teary. ‘Poor thing. She didn’t even know she was pregnant when the accident happened. Not only that, they’d been finally going to get married when they came home.’

Nick’s heart contracted. What a bloody rotten world it was. He shook his head sadly. ‘What terrible luck.’

‘Yes. I don’t know how Linda’s coped, I really don’t. But she’s a very brave lady. We’ve been neigh-bours for ages, you know, but, strangely, I didn’t get to know her till some time after Gordon was killed. They bought the original house together some years back, then had it done up. Actually, they were as good as married. I used to think they were. Of course, they weren’t here all that much. Always flitting around the world on some assignment or other, those two. He’d take the photographs and she’d write the stories.’

Nick didn’t say a word for fear of stopping the woman’s flow of gossip.

‘Anyway, one day late in her pregnancy Linda appeared on my doorstep and asked if she might come in for a cup of tea and a chat. She was so lonely, the poor love. As I said, that brother of hers is useless. And her parents have passed on, so she has no mother to turn to.

‘After that she used to visit me nearly every day and we became firm friends. When Rory was born and she had so much trouble with him it was me she turned to for advice. Quite desperate she would get some days. I did all I could to help her, but, quite frankly, Linda’s just not one of those girls who took to motherhood and staying at home all the time. It drove her crazy.’

‘It can’t be easy with no father te-help,’ Nick murmured sympathetically.

‘Yes, you’re quite right. Still, with a bit of luck Linda will find someone else to marry her eventually, and to be a father to Rory. She’s a good-looking girl. Meanwhile, I was only too happy to come in and mind Rory when she went back to work,’ Madge raved on. ‘Though he’s a bit of a devil at times. High-spirited, like his mother. Oh, goodness, listen to me, gossiping away and probably boring you to death. I’d better check on Rory, and you’d better get on with mowing that lawn!’

Nick did just that, but his mind remained with Linda’s story. It was really tragic, he thought. Dave’s sister didn’t sound as if she was coping all that well. But he didn’t think the answer was for her to race out and marry again. He’d seen some disasters with unsuitable stepfathers who didn’t have it in them to love and care for another man’s child.

Still, it wasn’t any of his business, was it? He was only here to mow the lawn.

It only took him fifteen minutes to complete the job. When he stopped the mower and wheeled it back into the garage, the muffled sound of a baby crying filtered through the door which led back inside the house.

Nick sighed his regret at waking the child, but there was nothing he could have done about it. Mowing lawns was a noisy occupation. It was also a hot one. Even in that short space of time, beads of perspiration had pooled all over his upper body, and the T-shirt was clinging to his back. He decided to take up Madge’s offer of a cool drink before he got back on his bike and headed home to the convent.

The baby’s crying seemed to grow louder and more frantic in the minute it took Nick to return the mower to its place in the corner of the garage then pull down the rolling door. When he opened the door which led into the interior of the house, his ears were blasted with high-pitched cries which alternated between shrieks and sobs.

Why in God’s name didn’t Madge go and see to the child?

Nick frowned as he strode across the living-room floor. He did not approve of the idea of letting a baby cry itself back to sleep—not when that crying had gone beyond crying to hysteria.