She still wasn’t quite sure which aspect of her own behaviour she found the least palatable—the fact that she had been so unexpectedly sensually aware of and aroused by him or the fact that her behaviour had made her question if she knew herself as well as she had always thought.
Both led to the kind of in-depth thinking about herself and her past which she found easier to avoid than to face, which was probably why, right now, she found herself not just embarrassed to have met Brad again but almost antagonistic towards him as well.
Once they were sitting down and eating, to Claire’s mild irritation and embarrassment, Irene started to list enthusiastically Claire’s domestic abilities for Brad’s benefit.
‘Claire is a wonderful cook,’ she told him when he had commented on her own cooking. ‘Of course, my brother, John, was an extremely fussy eater and he never really approved of the fact that Claire insisted on growing her own vegetables …’
‘Oh?’ Brad gave Claire a curious look. ‘Most health-conscious people these days take the view that homegrown produce is the best.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t that he disapproved of that,’ Irene explained. ‘No, John simply thought that that kind of gardening wasn’t really suitable for a woman. He—’
‘My husband would have preferred me to hire someone to look after our vegetable plot.’ Claire felt compelled to interrupt Irene and explain. ‘He didn’t think that sort of gardening was … He felt I should confine myself to—’
‘John was a very old-fashioned man,’ Tim cut in, giving Claire an affectionate, supportive smile. ‘He believed that a woman’s role in the garden should be confined to the picking and arranging of flowers.’
‘John simply didn’t want Claire overtaxing herself.’ Irene bristled, quick to defend her brother.
‘And besides, our mother always had someone in to do the heavy work. Of course, you know, Tim, that John always blamed you for Claire’s interest in her vegetable garden. You were the one, after all, who encouraged her, going round there virtually every weekend to help her.’
Whilst Claire and Tim exchanged slightly guilty and conspiratorial looks Irene sighed and shook her head, grumbling about the amount of time that Tim gave to his precious garden.
Then Tim commented enthusiastically to Claire, ‘I’m going to have another try with the asparagus, dig out a new bed, and I was thinking … That south wall of yours—there’s no reason why we shouldn’t try a grapevine on it. There are some new strains now that are far more hardy.’
‘You prefer the domestic environment, then, do you, Claire?’ Brad overrode Tim, his voice somehow unexpectedly hard-edged as he looked almost challengingly at her. ‘You’ve never had any desire to have a career?’ he asked pointedly, or so it seemed to Claire.
‘Being a stepmother to Sally and John’s wife was my career,’ Claire told him stiffly.
‘A career which is now over,’ Brad said silkily. ‘Haven’t you been tempted, as so many modern women are, to take up the challenge of making a place for yourself in the commercial arena? After all, these days there is no such thing as a job for life. All of us have to be flexible, adaptable and to accept that sometimes, for our own good, we have to change career paths.’
Claire could see how nervous Brad’s comments were making Tim. Was he simply trying to get at her, she wondered, or was he using her as a means of warning Tim of what lay ahead?
Either way there was something she intended to point out to him.
‘I did train as a teacher,’ she told him coolly. ‘That’s how I met John and—’
‘John wanted Claire to be at home for Sally once they were married,’ Irene intervened. ‘She works part-time now on a voluntary basis at a special school for disadvantaged children …’
‘I see … Such work must be very emotionally draining. I should have thought you would prefer the … tranquillity of your gardening.’
‘Plants can be as quarrelsome and awkward in their way as children,’ Claire told him with unusual sharpness as she watched the way he looked from Tim’s face to her own. ‘And besides, it isn’t the children I find hard to deal with so much as the way that other people treat them …’
‘No matter how well intentioned they are or how well drawn up, no amount of anti-discrimination laws can genuinely legislate against people’s prejudices—what they feel gut-deep inside themselves,’ Brad told her quietly, his earlier sharpness subsiding.
‘No,’ Claire agreed. ‘They can’t.’
‘I realise that it may not necessarily be of any comfort to you, but there is a school of thought that suggests that we can and do choose what we will and will not be when we are reincarnated on this earth, and that such children bring with them special gifts of courage and understanding.’
Claire gave him a surprised look. In view of what had happened between them she had not expected him to want to offer her any kind of emotional comfort.
As though he had read her mind, he told her calmly and unexpectedly openly, ‘I went through a very bad time when my folks were killed. I was very angry, very resentful, very bitter. We were never what you would call a religious family but out local pastor did his best to help. He told me that some people found it helped to view such tragedies as indications that they were stronger than others, that somehow they must be and that they would find strength to overcome whatever had happened to them. Or perhaps he simply judged that I would react better that way.’
Instead of lapsing into silence and so escaping from the extremely odd and disturbing sensations, both emotional and physical, that Brad was somehow arousing inside her—sensations which were not unlike the unpleasantness of pins and needles experienced when feeling finally started to return to a formerly numb limb, she recognised warily—she heroically subdued her instinct to retreat into herself and said firmly to Brad, ‘I understand that one of the reasons you want to lodge in a family home is because you have a large family back at home in America …’
‘Yes,’ Brad agreed. ‘I’m the eldest of six. They’ve all left home and established lives and families of their own now—all but the youngest … He got married a short while back. But it doesn’t stop there. Ours is a small town by American standards, and at times it feels like I can’t so much as walk down Main Street without bumping into an aunt or a cousin or some other relative.
‘My father and his two brothers set up an air-conditioning plant in the town in the early fifties. Until recently both my uncles still worked in the business. One of them retired on doctor’s orders last fall and the other …’
He paused, his eyes suddenly becoming shadowed, and Claire wondered what it was he was thinking to have caused that look of mingled anger and pain.
It was gone eleven o’clock when she eventually left, and when Brad stood up politely as she said her goodbyes and came towards her she suddenly discovered that instead of holding out her hand for him to shake she was virtually on the point of lifting her face to his … For what …? For him to kiss … And not decorously and socially on the cheek either, but as he had done this afternoon—on her lips, on her mouth, slowly caressing and exploring, making her feel … making her want.
Hot-faced, she took a quick step back from him and almost barged into Irene, who was watching her frowningly.
‘Well, don’t forget that we’re bringing Brad round to see the house in the morning, will you?’ Irene reminded her bossily as Claire turned to her. ‘Will eleven suit you?’
‘Eleven … yes. Eleven’s fine,’ Claire agreed jerkily.