Crescendo

'Get out!' she screamed, and the door burst open and Grandie hobbled in panting, exhausted by his race to get there. He looked at Gideon with a hatred little short of hers.

'I told you to stay away from her!'

Gideon didn't speak. He went out, and Grandie came to the bed to look down at her shadowed features on the pillow.

'What did he do?' He sounded so angry that Marina almost smiled.

'Nothing. I woke up and he was sitting there.'

'Damn him!' snarled Grandie, and then he said some other things in a low hoarse mumble, swear­ing viciously and clenching his hands as though he could kill Gideon.

Gideon had been one of his pupils; Grandie had been very proud of that. He had wanted Gideon to learn to probe beneath the dazzling gloss of his sur- face technique and when he did Grandie had been delighted. Gideon had developed beyond the master of bravura that he had once been and Grandie had been glowing with pride as he listened to him. Now he hated him for Marina's sake and all his pride in Gideon had gone.

She watched him and wondered for the first time how much Grandie knew. His hatred for Gideon had to have some reason. She looked at him searchingly and asked point-blank, 'How much has he told you?'

Grandie sat down slowly and took both her hands. 'Everything,' he said. 'He didn't hide anything.' He sounded as though he could even hate Gideon for being honest. 'I wanted to kill him at the time. I told him to stay away from you from then on, but of course he didn't. When did Gideon ever do what he was asked? He's self-willed, oblivious to the needs and wishes of everyone else in the world.'

Marina nodded. Closing her eyes, she gave a weary little yawn. 'I'll go back to sleep.'

'Let me stay,' Grandie whispered as though he pleaded, and she smiled at him tenderly.

'For a little while, then, until I'm asleep.'

He patted her hands before he went and sat where Gideon had sat, watching her, and she fell asleep again before long, sinking into a blank world.

She woke up to hear the angry voices down below and to know that Gideon had not gone. Grandie was shouting, but then he lowered his voice to a furious whisper. She could guess what he was saying. Gideon was refusing to go and Grandie was trying to throw him out.

Marina sat up and looked at the two neat dolls. Emma's green ballet shoes stuck up as though she had danced all night. For the past year they had been there, watching her, but now she had grown out of them and she recognised it with regret.

They had been her childhood substitutes for friends and she had left them behind when she met Gideon, although she had kept up the game during the early years. The woman who lay in the bed looked at the bland empty little faces and sighed.

They were lucky, even though they didn't know it. They didn't have to come out of their calm placid little world and face reality.

There were still a lot of things she had to face, lying there in the bed and shivering as though she were cold. She looked back over the few days Gideon had spent at the cottage and realised a lot of things which had passed over her head at the time.

She realised for a start why he had looked so white and shocked when they met, why he had stopped his car and run like a madman as he saw her at the cliff edge. He had thought she might be going to jump off.

That was why he had stared at her, hardly daring to come any closer as she looked back at him. When he realised she just didn't know him he had dared to come closer, but he had been shattered when she smiled at him. She could see his face now, the shocked disbelief in it. It was funny, she thought. Wasn't it funny? She had recognised that he was shocked and had generalised it, wondering if people didn't often smile at him and being surprised by that. Of course he had been taken aback. The last

thing he had expected from her was a broad smile.

Gideon was a swine, she thought, realising how he had been moving closer to her every day—touching her, kissing her, charming her all over again, safe behind his anonymous cloak, aware that she had no memory of him to protect her from him.

Grandie had tried to protect her, to stop him, and she herself had come between them, making it clear to Grandie that she wanted Gideon there and that she liked him. Gideon had used her to get himself inside the house. He had played coldly, cunningly, on her lack of awareness, and Grandie had been helpless.

Suddenly she began to shake as another memory invaded her and her whole body began to burn.

'That dream, she thought, staring at the dolls with fixed stricken eyes.

Dream? Had it been a dream? Or had she gone to him in a sleepwalker's trance and had Gideon taken what she was unknowingly offering him?

She didn't know. The girl she had believed her­self to be would never have done such a thing, but the woman she was in reality might have been so awoken by Gideon's kisses and caressing hands that evening that she might have gone in search of the fulfilment her body craved.

She put her hands over her eyes as sickness crawled inside her. She hadn't, had she?

The door opened and Grandie asked anxiously: What is it? Are the headaches worse? Shall I ring the doctor?'

She brushed her eyes and lowered her hands slowly. 'No, I'm quite all right.' She took a deep breath. 'Has he gone?'