CATHY WILLIAMS - Naive Awakening

She wondered whether he thought that they would stick to his grandfather’s generosity like two parasites and shamelessly eat them out of house and home.

Oh, he had exploited the situation admirably, and as far as she was concerned had left her bereft of any pride.

Now here they were, standing on the platform of a station the size of which she had never seen before, surrounded by their clutter of battered suitcases, some of which had been tied with string, and no porter in sight.

What seemed like thousands of people, more people in fact than lived in her entire village, hurried around them, carefully side-stepping their bags, intent on their business. In Yorkshire, she thought ruefully, there would have been no shortage of people willing to help them.

Her brother was lost in the novelty of it all, as he had been from the very minute he had stepped on to the train at their tiny station.

Leigh looked at him affectionately and promptly ordered him to go and find a trolley.

‘Where?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said irritably, ‘just go and get one. If we wait for someone to come along and help us, we’ll be here till we go grey.’

He ambled off obediently, and left her to her thoughts. More doubts and a feeling of being completely out of her depth. She had been to Leeds a few times before, but only once to London when she was very young, when Freddie was only a baby, and it was as vast and confusing as she remembered.

She only hoped that Nicholas was outside waiting for them, as he had promised he would be, because if he wasn’t it would be another nightmare of waiting for a taxi to take them to the house in Hampstead.

Oh, God, she thought, why on earth had she ever agreed to come here? She didn’t belong here, she belonged in the country, where people only dressed up for special occasions, and the busiest place was the local market.

Here, everyone seemed so smartly dressed, lots of high heels and tailored skirts everywhere, and the men walking briskly in their suits and carrying briefcases! She couldn’t remember her grandfather ever wearing a suit, although he must have possessed one at some point in time.

She glanced down at her own outfit, a light flowered sleeveless dress falling softly around her slim figure, and a pair of sandals. She had even brought her straw hat with her, to protect her face from the sun.

She was quite pale-skinned, with a smattering of freckles, which always came out with a vengeance if she wasn’t very careful in the sun. She wished now that she had forgotten about the hat, because she imagined that it only served to emphasise how rustic she was.

Freddie returned with a trolley, and after what seemed like ages they managed to find their way through the ticket barrier, and outside the station, which was every bit as crowded as it had been outside.

‘Wow,’ Freddie crowed, staring around him, ‘have you ever seen crowds like these?’

‘Ask me whether I ever wanted to.’

‘Stop being so miserable,’ Freddie said, turning to her with a frown.

‘I’m not being miserable. I just miss all the open space.’

‘I don’t.’

‘I know you don’t. You’re like a little boy at Christmas-time!’

They laughed and she put her arm around him, noticing with amusement how he edged out of her embrace. Sisterly cuddles were taboo with him, especially sisterly cuddles administered in public.

She was looking around for Nicholas, when she heard his deep voice from behind her.

‘So I see you managed to find your way here all right.’

She swung around, blushing as the grey eyes ran over her, feeling oddly as though his scrutiny was stripping her of her clothing.

‘Yes. No problem at all.’ She was here now, and she would be polite, but there was no reason why she should be friendly. She couldn’t forget those thinly veiled insinuations that she was irresponsible when it came to Freddie, and a potential gold-digger who would be given a job if the alternative was her sponging off their hospitality.

‘Good.’ He picked up the cases as though they weighed nothing at all and began striding away. Leigh hurried behind him, clutching her hat, oddly mesmerised by his easy, graceful walk. There was nothing clumsy or cumbersome about him. In fact, from behind, he could well pass for an athlete of some kind.

He was chatting to Freddie, answering all his excited questions, getting along with him as though they had known each other for years. Obviously his hostility did not extend to her brother.

She would, she thought, have to have a serious word with him about being careful not to let London go to his head, and to remember that he was a country lad at heart. The last thing she wanted was for him to change.

The gleaming Jaguar seemed to fill Freddie with as much reverential awe as it had the last time he had seen it.

‘It’s just a car, Freddie,’ Leigh commented, halting his monologue on its engine capacity in mid-flow, and missing Nicholas’s raised eyebrow. ‘Metal on four wheels, designed to get you from A to B.’ She slid into the front seat and strapped herself in, inwardly admiring the walnut dashboard and the deep, luxurious seats.

‘A lot of women would be very impressed by this particular piece of metal on four wheels,’ Nicholas murmured, as he started the engine. His eyes slid along to her face, and Leigh purposefully ignored both him and the little leap of her pulse.

‘Really?’ she said, gazing with mixed feelings through the window. ‘I can’t see why. As far as I’m concerned, the last thing that would impress me about a man would be his car. Or, for that matter, the sort of house he lived in, or the kind of clothes he wore. All that’s superficial and doesn’t say a thing about the kind of person he is.’ So, she wanted to add, you needn’t worry that I’m after your money.

‘And have you been impressed by any men?’

Leigh frowned and didn’t answer, because as far as she was concerned it was none of his business whatsoever.

‘No,’ Freddie chipped in from the back seat, ‘she hasn’t had a boyfriend for ages, since she broke up with Dean Stanley, in fact.’

‘I’ll thank you to not go broadcasting my private affairs to all and sundry,’ she snapped. ‘You’re not too old to rediscover the meaning of punishment.’

Freddie made a face at her and resumed his attention to what they were passing, and Nicholas, she was annoyed to see, was looking vaguely amused by the interchange.

‘Anyway,’ she said in a honeyed voice, ‘is that why you drive this? So that you can impress girls?’

‘I don’t go out with girls,’ he replied, not at all disconcerted by her sarcasm, ‘I go out with women. And I don’t need to impress them with a car.’

Leigh refused to ask him what sort of things he used to impress them. There was an intonation to his voice, something soft and insinuating, that sent her mind racing and she firmly slapped it right back into place.

He took them a circuitous route, on Freddie’s pleading, pointing out all the sights to them, and still with that very slight edge of amusement to his voice, which went completely over Freddie’s head, but didn’t go over hers one bit.

After a while, though, she found herself listening to what he was saying, and actually enjoying his amusing descriptions of the buildings and landmarks. He had a dry wit which made her chuckle on a couple of occasions, even though she reminded herself that she didn’t care for him, or, for that matter, what he represented.

It was slightly over an hour later when the car pulled through the heavy gates which led on to the small courtyard in front of the house. The gardens were not massive—Leigh supposed that in London land was at a premium—but the house made up for that. It was enormous, the impressive frontage studded with numerous leaded windows.