‘Of course I like him … love him come to that. He’s one of us, don’t mistake me. When we were kids he was the story-teller, the adjudicator in all our fights, and being so much older than the rest of us we were a bit in awe of him. That was where the rot started, I think. We respected his privacy too much, let him retreat to the fringes of our lives as we grew older, instead of getting to know him better. And now he’s out of reach … almost. When I get the chance I like to remind him who he is and what he’s part of. I can’t resist giving him the occasional provocative prod—and August will be more than that, it’ll be a whacking great thump over the head!’
‘You’re really enjoying this aren’t you?’ murmured Julia, unable to get a clear picture of the man Richard was describing. He sounded rather dull … commercial law, for goodness sake! Julia had always pictured him as a kind of red-headed Perry Mason in the past, now she hastily toned it down. But a dull Marlow? It was a contradiction in terms.
‘Loving every delicious moment,’ admitted Richard unrepentantly. ‘I can’t wait to see his impotent squirming when Connie gets hold of him. She’ll not let him escape our clutches—he may be impatient of the rest of us, but Connie he won’t refuse, not categorically anyway. I was over at his place, you know, when this American professor phoned and let the cat out of the bag. Hugh swore me to eternal silence so silent I shall remain! I nearly killed myself driving home, I was laughing so hard.’
He was still laughing as Julia drove away and she briefly entertained the thought that it might be something of a strain to survive Richard’s practical jokes day in, day out. Poor Hugh. She hoped he was equal to the shock.
CHAPTER TWO
OVER the weeks leading up to and following Phillip’s departure, Julia saw quite a lot of Richard Marlow. Declaring himself in need of intelligent female companionship he set himself the task of taking over Julia’s social life. He was great company, if a trifle exhausting and his presence was like a blast of fresh air in Julia’s life. If now and then he lapsed into moodiness she put it down to actor’s temperament. Had it been any other man, she might have thought that the desire for her constant company was a sign that he was beginning to get serious. But Richard never got serious about any women.
When he told her that he was going down to Craemar the weekend before Julia, baching it for a few days, her impulsive generosity surfaced and she promised to make up one of her special hampers for him. His instant acceptance left her with the feeling that her too-ready sympathies had been very cleverly manipulated.
When he collected his bounty on the Friday, Richard was wildly over-effusive with his thanks, handing over a fistful of dollars to cover her expenses and cheerfully informing her that his chief duty was to get to Craemar before his elder brother.
‘I want to be there when The Man meets his fate!’ he cried as the dusty MG took off with a callous roar, scattering gravel from Phillip’s well-raked driveway as he took the curve at speed. Really, he was a shocking driver, thought Julia as she prepared for her own journey. She was spending the weekend with her parents at Ngatea, a handy stop-over on the way to Craemar.
Julia had lived independently of her parents ever since she had left New Zealand at eighteen to further her experience in Europe. But her family background had been a happy and secure one and she had always kept in close touch, wherever her life took her.
Arriving at Ngatea in time for morning tea, Julia found herself subjected to the usual parental interrogation about her health and welfare, and, naturally, her current lack of a steady boyfriend.
‘When I think of all those nice boys you used to bring home,’ her mother sighed reminiscently, ‘and all those interesting European men you wrote home about … wasn’t there even one …?’
‘Nope.’ Julia helped herself to another piece of shortbread, wishing absently that she had inherited her mother’s fine-boned figure. Instead she had her father’s sturdy genes. She was the same height as her mother, but more generously endowed in all
directions. As a teenager she had agonised about the embarrassing lushness of her lines, compared to the coltish modesty of her schoolmates’.
‘I don’t suppose you and Richard Marlow …?’ Nan Fry began wistfully.
‘Nope.’ Julia rolled her eyes at her father, and he came obligingly to the rescue.
‘Oh, leave her alone, Nan. Give her a few years yet. Remember, we didn’t meet until we were thirty. I’d rather Julia was too much discriminating than too little.’
Was she too discriminating? Julia wondered that night as she settled into the familiar sag of her narrow bed. Her friends all seemed to fall in and out of love at the drop of a hat. She was sure none of them were still virgins.
The trouble was that she had never been severely tempted, not even by some of the suave operators she had met in Europe. She had never yet met a man who made her breathless, who made her heart pound, who thrilled her with his touch, the kind of unmistakable signs that her friends talked about. Oh, she had had great fun with a number of men—laughed, talked, petted a little, but had never felt any compelling curiosity to carry it further. She couldn’t believe that all there was to love was liking someone enough to fall into bed with them.
Julia’s weekend passed with leisured slowness, interrupted only by the noisy arrival of her brother, Ben, on his motorcycle. Skinny, bearded, and going through a laconic phase, he mellowed with the roast lamb, sloughing the veneer currently favoured by his university peers.
‘How’s life, Julia Jinx?’ he asked, through a mouthful of roast potato.
‘She offered to mow the lawns yesterday afternoon,’ Edward Fry told him tolerantly.
‘Don’t tell me … the engine blew up!’
‘Close,’ his father grinned. ‘A wheel fell off.’
Ben gave a shout of laughter and Julia glared at him. Her hopelessness with things mechanical was a family joke. Automatic washing machines, copiers, vacuum cleaners and even electronic games behaved mysteriously when she attempted to operate them. That’s why she stuck so determinedly to her rust-bucket of a VW. It wasn’t new and shiny and sophisticated; and potentially lethal! The only other piece of machinery she trusted was her second-hand blender. She had bought it from a London flatmate who had originally purchased it in the Middle East. It had an indistinguishable brand name and made a horrific noise when it worked, but it did work. ‘Buster’ Julia affectionately called her miracle and it was in her car now, resting reverently in her suitcase along with her very expensive set of German chef’s knives and the weighty cookery tome that was her Bible.
Julia had intended to leave early Sunday afternoon, but her little break had made her lazy and it was nearly four o’clock before she threw her overnight bag into the front seat of her car and said goodbye to her parents.
Ben gave her a brotherly once-over. Julia’s pint-sized figure was clad in a warm but shrunken sweatshirt, bearing the legend: Conserve Our Wildlife … Love a Kiwi. Black leather jacket and matching jeans and cowboy boots completed the picture. For convenience she had bunched her flyaway curls into short pigtails and several recalcitrant freckles stood out prominently on her scrubbed cheeks.
‘You look like a pre-adolescent bikie. Want to borrow my wheels?’
Julia wrinkled her nose. ‘You should be so lucky. I know you’re just jealous of my eternal youth.’
It wasn’t only her lack of inches that made her look young. The largeness of the deep blue eyes fringed with thick, light brown lashes made the rest of her small, oval face look oddly babyish, as if it still had to grow to adult size.