Enemy From the Past Read online

  ‘For you there’ll be no escape from me,’ Slade Anderson had told Rosalind when she had spurned his shy advances and love. That had been eight years ago. Now he was back in her life, and unless she wanted to ruin her beloved brother she had got to fulfil Slade’s condition— and marry him. And now the boot was on the other foot—for now it was Rosalind who loved, and Slade who was keeping at a distance …

  Enemy From The Past

  Lilian Peake

  CHAPTER ONE

  IT was evening and supper was behind them. All day Rosalind had sensed an uneasiness in her brother. When Jeanie, his wife, had died, Patrick had asked his sister to move into his house and live rent-free. In return, he had said, she could look after both the house and himself. Since her own bedsitter was badly lacking in home comforts, she had agreed.

  Patrick sat forward, hands tightly clasped, and said, ‘Rosa, the company’s nearly broke.’

  ‘The company’—his company, where Rosalind also worked. For some time she had known that all was not well but had assumed that, since Patrick had not confided in her, he had been able to cope. It appeared now that the situation was blacker than she had even imagined.

  ‘Was it John pulling out his money,’ she asked, ‘that started the trouble?’

  ‘It dates more or less from that time.’

  ‘Which is why he saw the red light and got out fast?’

  ‘Possibly, but I don’t blame him. Unless I do something drastic,’ Patrick went on, ‘such as finding myself another partner, it’s the end.’ He spoke jerkily. ‘But men with money to spare and willing to risk losing it by sinking it into a failing business are thin on the ground.’

  Patrick’s computer consultancy, Compro, was his pride and joy. In his late twenties, which was only about four years ago, he and a university friend, John Welson, had left the firm for which they had both worked. Together they had taken their futures into their own hands and formed the consultancy.

  The company had started to grow. Then Jeanie had died and Patrick had been almost prostrate with grief. When at last he had come to accept his wife’s death, he had returned to work, but his enthusiasm had gone. As a result John Welson had, without his partner’s complete support, found the struggle to keep the company going too much. He had told Patrick that it was necessary to withdraw from a number of the projects which had come the firm’s way and that, plainly, the firm’s finances would suffer. A few weeks later John had resigned and moved on, and Patrick was left to face the bleak future alone.

  And now he was desperate. Rosalind said, ‘I’ve got some money put by. It’s not much, I suppose, but you could have it.’

  ‘Thanks, Rosa, but—’ Patrick shook his head, ‘the company needs a substantial amount of money to save it. It also needs a driving force behind it to give it a momentum to move upwards instead of down.’

  ‘You’re that,’ said Rosalind, but knowing her words were spoken more in hope than in truth.

  ‘Not any more.’ After a moment Patrick said, ‘I’ve found someone, Rosa, someone willing to step in with money and assistance.’

  He was silent for so long, Rosalind ventured, ‘Who? Tell me who?’

  ‘Someone I knew well in the past. Since then he’s achieved academic success, held responsible jobs, been in America for six years working in the electronics and computing industries.’ A pause. ‘Amassed something halfway to a fortune.’

  ‘Have you contacted him?’ Rosalind asked excitedly. Patrick nodded. ‘And he’s consented to be your partner?’ She frowned, genuinely puzzled. ‘For such a clever man, wouldn’t it be a backward step?’

  ‘All I can tell you is that he jumped at the chance. But with two conditions. One was that since he’s putting so much money into the business, he should become the senior partner.’

  ‘And the other condition?’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me. When we meet would do, he said.’

  ‘How could you allow him to push you into second place? It would be a kind of takeover, wouldn’t it? Yet you dreamed up the company, with John Welson. Now this man, whoever he is, has got the—the audacity to wave the promise of a few banknotes around and demand overall control—’

  ‘More than a few banknotes, Rosa. A lot of hard cash.’

  ‘In other words, the old one about paying the piper and calling the tune.’

  Patrick shrugged. ‘If I’m happy …’

  ‘But are you?’

  ‘Knowing the man’s ability and brainpower, and having discussed policy matters and ideas for the future with him, I’m only too glad to have him on my side instead of having to compete with him if he decided to start his own company. If he did that, we’d lose, no doubt about it.’

  ‘Have you seen this man?’

  ‘Not for some years. I talked to him by telephone.’

  ‘You called America? It must have cost a fortune!’

  ‘He called me back. When he heard about our financial struggles, he told me to put the phone down and he’d ring me. He did, immediately.’

  Rosalind breathed out heavily. She hated to see her brother having to go cap in hand to anyone, especially to someone he had once known. It was bad enough having to admit failure to a relative, let alone an old friend.

  ‘He must obviously be some kind of superman,’ she said tartly. ‘Who is he, Patrick? Do I know him?’

  There was a long pause. It was as if Patrick were summoning the courage to speak. ‘You do know him, or should I say, knew him. We were all kids together.’

  Rosalind’s eyes clouded with a mist of disbelief and horror. ‘Not—Slade Anderson?’

  Her brother nodded.

  ‘Patrick, how could you? He’s useless, money or no money, he’ll ruin the business. I remember him well.’ Too well, she thought. ‘He’s a dull, stupid nonentity.’

  ‘He’s a brilliant man, Rosalind. Anyway, it’s too late now. He’s back over here. We got together, saw a lawyer, agreed a contract. Tomorrow we meet, all three of us. I’ve asked him here.’ He pulled himself upright in the chair. ‘You see, tomorrow, all being well… provided the second condition is fulfilled, whatever it might be … we sign the contract.’

  Later that evening, in the security of her own room, Rosalind sank on to the bed and lay, hands behind her head, staring at the fading white of the ceiling.

  It was eight years before and Rosalind was nearly sixteen. She had grown sick and tired of her brother Patrick’s friend, Slade Anderson, following her about. He lived with his parents and younger sister Emma in the bungalow next door.

  Whenever she had called to see her friend Emma, it had always been Slade who had opened the door to her, Slade who had watched her make her way to Emma’s room. As Rosalind had developed and grown towards womanhood, Slade had always been there to see her laughing with Emma over their girlish jokes, gazing longingly at young male idols in Emma’s magazines.

  At dances and parties Slade, growing up too, and un-repentantly unsociable, had attended only to find a wall to prop himself against, while Rosalind had used her eyes and her very feminine curves to invite other lounging youths to dance with her. Each time Slade had detached himself from the wall and asked diffidently if he could be her partner, she had laughed in his face and given him her back to look at.

  All this he had tolerated, knowing perhaps instinctively, perhaps through having a sister of his own, of her need to be reassured of her ability to draw the opposite sex, to fill them full of hope with the promise in her eyes, then have the selfish delight of seeing their disappointment when that promise was withdrawn and even thrown back in their faces.

  It was her sixteenth birthday and Emma and Slade had been invited to tea. Slade had produced an expensive camera with a flash attachment and taken
a picture of Rosalind’s face illuminated by the flames from the candles. Afterwards, Rosalind and Emma had gone upstairs to Rosalind’s room, while Patrick and Slade had listened to music on the hi-fi equipment in the lounge.

  Emma, who belonged to a tennis club, had finally left. Rosalind had sat on the floor and spread out around her all her birthday presents. The door had opened slowly and Slade had stood watching her. It was plain that he did not know whether to advance or remain where he was. What was also unmistakable was the adoration in his eyes.

  It was a look which frightened Rosalind for so many reasons. It seemed to be an accumulation of all those years of watching her, of boyish admiration which even at twenty-three had still not quite matured. It was youthful desire hoarded and stored and swept into an inflammatory pile like leaves and branches in the autumn waiting for a match to be put to it.

  Rosalind had risen and stretched slowly and luxuriously. She was aware of revealing the mature shape of her body, knowing intuitively that she was inciting the adoring young man who followed her every move and curve. Never once through the years had he told her of his feelings. Maybe he had guessed that, had he done so, she would once again have laughed in his face.

  ‘What do you want?’ She had spoken to her own reflection in the mirror, while running a comb through springing dark curls and letting the silky strands fall to bounce around her neck. She had flung the comb down and turned, resting her back against the dressing-table.

  Provoking him by flinging back her head and moving the upper half of her body so that his eye riveted on the young firmness of her breasts, she said, ‘Young men aren’t supposed to come into a woman’s bedroom.’

  Perspiration was dampening his brow and he had dashed at it with a handkerchief, in his agitation dislodging his glasses so that they fell to the carpet. More confused than ever, he stooped to pick them up, straightening and ramming them back into place against the background of her high-pitched laughter.

  He had said in a choked voice, ‘You’re not a woman.’

  ‘I’m sixteen,’ she had pouted, looking down at herself. ‘Anyway, I look like a woman. Lots of boys have told me. Anyhow,’ she had looked him over contemptuously, ‘you’re not a man, are you? Why, some boys of eighteen I know have had more experience than you with girls. You haven’t had any, have you?’ She had almost heard the grinding of his teeth and laughed her shrill, jeering laugh.

  He had lunged across the room, gripping her shoulders and searching in vain for scarlet lips which had turned this way and that. His hand had moved and found the back of her head, stilling it and pressing his mouth to hers. It had not been the kiss of a man, but an over-eager, ardent youth. His other hand had gripped the tantalising swell of her breast. She had twisted away, bringing her fist down on his arm and dislodging the grasping fingers.

  ‘Don’t you dare touch me that way!’ she had shrieked. ‘Stop mauling me, Slade Anderson!’ He had moved away, seeking again for his handkerchief to mop his brow. ‘You know what you are?’ she had flung at him. ‘A dull, stupid, inexperienced—’ she paused for more insulting words, her eyes skimming over him, ‘skinny, scrawny hunk of a boy, that’s what you are. And don’t ever come near me again, do you hear?’

  He had backed to the door, his breathing heavy, his eyes strangely frightening in his now pale, gaunt, bespectacled face. ‘You won’t see me after today,’ he said. ‘I’ve got another job. I’m going away. But I’ll be back, Rosa, and I don’t care if by then you’re married with half a dozen kids, I’ll make you pay for what you’ve said and done to me. For you there’ll be no escape.’

  He had gone and she was left staring after him, lips oddly trembling, eyes moist and staring—and her heart had been drumming with a curious fear.

  It was midway during the morning that the telephone rang. Rosalind let it ring until her brother came in from the back garden to answer it. She was busy preparing the meal, hoping that her choice of meat pie and duchesse potatoes followed by meringues glacés topped with whipped cream would be to their guest’s taste, although no doubt he had grown used to more exotic foods while living abroad.

  It seemed that Patrick had not heard. The ringing was deafening her, so she dropped the spoon with a clatter and ran into the entrance hall. Irritably she said the number. The call was almost certainly for Patrick. He should have been listening, she thought irrationally.

  There had been a pause after she had spoken, then a man’s deep voice said, ‘I’d like to speak to Patrick, please.’ The tone was polite and entirely formal, but some instinct told her who the caller might be.

  ‘Is that Slade—Slade Anderson?’ she asked. Was he cancelling, having recalled another engagement?

  ‘It is.’

  ‘This—this is Rosalind, Slade.’

  ‘I know.’ He had known but had made no comment?

  ‘You remember me, then?’

  ‘I remember you.’ A short, exhaled sigh revealed irritation. ‘Would you put me on to Patrick now?’

  ‘Have you called to cancel?’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but no. I would like a word with your brother.’ .

  The receiver in Rosalind’s hand hit the telephone table with a clatter. ‘Your brother!’ she fumed. How cool could he get? Persistence, she thought, hurrying to the kitchen door and seeing Patrick at the end of the long garden. That should be his name, not Anderson.

  He always had persisted, relentlessly, determinedly. He had been like a flesh-and-blood ghost, pursuing her daytime and night-time, even into her dreams, a giant, threatening figure. She had run, he had followed, never letting up, and she had awoken bathed in perspiration.

  Patrick had come in at her call and was speaking to the caller. ‘Okay,’ he was saying, ‘I’ll see you in ten minutes at the Crown.’ He rang off.

  He said to Rosalind, ‘Slade’s suggested a drink and a chat before lunch.’ He was removing his old gardening jacket.

  ‘But—’ Rosalind looked down at herself, ‘I’m not changed or anything. It’ll take me longer than that. Besides, there’s the meal—’

  ‘He didn’t invite you.’ Patrick disappeared to wash.

  Thanks, Rosalind thought, thank you very much, Slade Anderson! I’ve a good mind to drop everything and g6 out for the day … But there was Patrick and Patrick’s dreams …

  When the key turned in the lock and men’s voices filled the hallway, Rosalind was upstairs. Her dress was sleeveless and simple, the daffodil-yellow of the material emphasising the darkness of her hair. She added a touch more lipstick, fixed into place large white earrings and surveyed the result.

  Her face had thinned a little, having lost its youthful roundness, but wasn’t that natural, she thought, now that she was twenty-four? The high cheekbones and pointed chin gave her an unconscious charm, the slightly tip-tilted nose an added piquancy. The shape beneath the dress had fined down, too, but the womanliness it revealed was both promising and captivating.

  There was laughter downstairs. Patrick’s she recognised; the other was deep and knowing, as though a male-like joke had been exchanged. The noise stopped abruptly as she turned the corner of the staircase. It was an old house and the window throwing light on to the stairs was large. In the midst of the brown-panelled woodwork, it picked out her shape and features as if revealing her to an audience in semi-darkness below.

  There was an audience down there, but to her chagrin, she could not see it. The window below was of multicoloured glass, as in many houses of that age. This meant that Slade Anderson was at a distinct advantage. He was able to inspect her to his heart’s content while she could merely see, beside the medium height of her brother, the figure of a taller man.

  In the role of Patrick’s hostess—this was, after all, business—Rosalind smiled. Her mouth curved, the laughter lines around her eyes crinkling invitingly—until, on reaching the foot of the staircase, she saw her brother’s visitor.

  I remember how he used to be. The thought flashed across her mind like wor
ds on a computer screen. He was thin and serious and never laughed. And he was so clever I wanted to hit him … With a shock she realised two things —that the rash sixteen-year-old with blindly prejudiced judgment lived on inside her, and also that the withdrawn, diffident young man she had once abused and humiliated, had gone for ever.

  ‘Rosalind, Slade Anderson.’ Her brother spoke formally. His guest responded with an equally formal bow. It was brief but also the essence of politeness.

  Rosalind’s smile became more difficult to maintain. Her hand came out, its steadiness belying her irresolution. How should she speak to this stranger who looked at her as unemotionally and aloofly as if they had never met before?

  His hand met hers briefly. Her smile held. ‘I’m Rosa. Remember me?’

  ‘How could I forget you?’ he said quietly. It seemed he had no more to say so she raced on,

  ‘If I’d met you in the street I wouldn’t have recognised you.’

  Only his eyes replied, cool and grey-green and implacable beneath dark brows. Yet his mouth, even in its silence, spoke of many things—of a hardness within, a humourless amusement called into being by something about her.

  At Patrick’s invitation they moved into the living-room. Patrick seemed on edge, offering drinks and chinking glasses. Rosalind found herself floored by Slade’s attitude. Where was the friendliness of an old and close acquaintance returned to tell endless stories of the years between?

  Helplessly, waiting for the golden-brown inspiriting liquid to bring the reunion to life, she looked up at him. He seemed to have grown taller—or had it been that in those early years the contempt she had felt for him, which had been curiously inlaid with an underlying mosaic of fear, had in her imagination reduced him in stature?

  As he accepted the glass Patrick had offered and took part in the snatches of small talk with which his friend attempted to ease the situation, Slade watched Rosalind with appraising but unreadable eyes. Now and then the glass would be lifted to his mouth, but his gaze did not stray from her.

  To avoid the scrutiny because it embarrassed her intensely, Rosalind looked into the amber liquid which swirled at her bidding in the glass she held. It was then that she realised his glasses had gone. His hair seemed somehow darker, the brows thicker. His chin was square and firm, the nose was straighter, the lips fuller, more sensual, as if they had tasted and savoured the pleasures offered by the lips of who knew how many women?