Morning Song Read online

  ‘Shane usually spends a month or two out of every summer with us,’ Van explained to Lauren, and Lauren looked at him in surprise.

  ‘You never mentioned it,’ she said.

  ‘That’s because,’ Shane Holt answered for him in a rather cool tone, ‘he’s too good a friend to jeopardise my privacy.’

  Lauren stared at him. She did not know what she had expected from him, but this coolness, the distant manner which bordered on rudeness, took her by surprise. It was totally out of place for the sensitive, gentle man she had known him to be.

  Van placed a hand on each of their shoulders and smiled benevolently. ‘Well, now that I’ve matched you each with the perfect partner for the evening, I’ll leave you alone. You two have a lot in common, you’ll see. Misery loves company!’

  Lauren made a gesture of protest, but he moved too fast for her. She was left alone with the man she had been in love with most of her adult life, and she wished she was any place else.

  She should have been impressed. This was a dream come true, the chance of a lifetime, she was standing face to face with the man whose work she had treasured for ten years, whose soul she knew so well it had almost become a part of her. There should have been a hundred questions she wanted to ask him, she should have been bursting with things to say to him. So many times she had sighed to herself that she would die content if only she could walk up and shake the hand of the genius who had created such beauty ... Just to pay homage, just to say ‘Thank you’ for the glimpse he had given her of art in its most perfect form. But all of that seemed so distant now, none of it appropriate. It was as though, since the accident, a dull cloud had filmed over every emotion she had ever had, and all she could think of to say was, ‘I liked you better with your beard.’

  He replied, without looking at her, ‘Thank you for that information. I’m taking a poll.’

  She was almost shocked into some sharp retort of her own, but as a matter of fact, she was too taken aback to think of one. But some of her lethargy lifted as she bristled with insult, and she told him coldly, ‘There’s no need to be rude. I was just making conversation.’ And she turned on her heel to go.

  ‘I wasn’t being rude,’ he replied in a bored tone, and she stopped. ‘I was just being miserable. I believe that’s one of the things were supposed to have in common.’ She turned back to him, not so much because she wanted to stay as because she did not want to think of his eyes upon her as she limped across the room. He watched the activity across the room and did not appear to be much interested in whether she stayed or not.

  After a moment, Lauren tried again to make conversation. ‘Have you known Van long?’

  He made a noncommittal sound and sipped his drink, not looking at her. He seemed to have a real problem with making eye contact, and it annoyed her. It was her opinion that people who refused to look you in the eye were generally hiding something, and that was something she simply would not have expected from him. So, she thought wryly, your idol has feet of clay—don’t they all?

  Then he said unexpectedly, ‘Do you want to dance?’ She recoiled from him as though struck, and her response was swift and sharp. ‘No!’ It was a self-protective instinct, that was all, an automatic reaction which was completely uncontrollable.

  He lifted one brow slightly and mimicked her words softly, ‘You don’t have to be rude; I was just trying to make conversation.’

  She swallowed back a furious scarlet flush of embarrassment. She wanted to turn and walk away, but she would not give him the satisfaction. Instead, she faced him squarely, painted a pleasant expression on her face, and pretended to ignore their last interchange. She commented casually, ‘I know your music.’

  He dropped his eyes to his glass and repeated softly, ‘You know my music.’ The slight twist of his lips was derogatory, and the tone of his voice mocking. ‘Well, at least you didn’t say, “I’ve bought every record you ever made, Mr.. Holt”, or “Gee, I think you’re just terrific, Mr.. Holt.” Thanks for small favours.’

  She felt anger surge another stain of colour to her face. Was this the real Shane Holt, the man behind the sensitive lyrics and gentle prose—arrogant, conceited, sarcastic? She would never have believed it, and she did not feel so much disappointed at that moment as furious. He might very well be the most brilliant musician of the twentieth century—and right now she was not so sure any more—but he had no right to talk to her like that ... to treat anyone as no more than dust beneath his feet. She said stiffly, her eyes flashing a muted warning, ‘I’m not another one of your groupies, Mr.. Holt, which I’m sure will come as a terrible disappointment to you. I was merely trying to—’

  ‘Make conversation, I know,’ he interrupted drily. ‘Yet you presume to say you know my music. For your further enlightenment, Miss—whatever-your-name-was, let me tell you that no one knows my music. My producer doesn’t know it, my fans don’t know it, certainly the radio people don’t know it. I don’t even know it myself. So save yourself from making the same embarrassing mistake twice and never assume you think you know anything about an artist’s work.’

  If misery loved company, he had certainly bargained for his share of it tonight! He had engaged her in battle and he was not going to escape unscathed. Lauren felt adrenalin start to flow for the first time in months. ‘On the contrary,’ she replied mildly, her eyes still glittering, ‘it would be difficult to assume anything about your work, since you haven’t recorded anything in five years. In fact, I’m amazed that you presume to speak in the present tense about it at all. Isn’t that all just ancient history?’

  He was unruffled, and that only annoyed her more. ‘Perhaps,’ he agreed, and sipped from his glass.

  ‘So,’ she demanded, and this was one of the questions she had promised herself she would ask him if ever she was honoured—honoured!—to meet him, ‘what have you been doing these past years?’ She remembered how anxiously she had waited at first for his next album release, how disappointed she had been when it never came, and how she had wondered, the way the ignominious do about the famous, what had happened to him. He seemed to have abruptly disappeared off the face of the earth with no explanation or excuses, and she had even thought at one point he might have been dead. No one with the enormous talent he had could simply wilfully stop creating, and she thought he might have run into trouble with contracts or recording studios or producers ... she had never dreamed that the mystery of the disappearance of her idol could be solved by simply asking Van.

  And so it came as a surprise to her when he replied simply, without looking at her, ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing!’ she repeated incredulously, unable to keep her genuine shock from showing on her face, superseding all other emotions of spite and anger.

  ‘Nothing,’ he repeated blandly, and set his drink on the table. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me ...’

  ‘I will not!’ she cried, and caught his arm without thinking. She thought, of the wasted talent, the rare gift tossed so carelessly aside, the breathtaking prose and the heartrending melodies she would never hear again because he had decided to do—nothing! And, irrationally, she thought of how she would have given the world to be free to perform her art and how he so casually dismissed his own freedom to do so and she was furious. For the first time since the accident she was actually enraged over something other than her own fate, and Shane Holt received the full force of it. ‘I will not excuse you,’ she reiterated in a low, seething voice. His eyes fastened pointedly and with some surprise upon the grip she had on his arm and she released it automatically, but went on, her eyes snapping, ‘How can you say so casually you’ve done “nothing”? Do you mean you haven’t written, you haven’t performed—all these years we’ve been waiting for something new from you and you’ve done nothing?”

  ‘Miss—?’ he paused politely.

  ‘Lauren,’ she snapped, impatient for his response to her accusations. ‘Lauren Davis.’

  ‘All right, Lauren,’ he said smoothly. ‘Whi
le I must say I’m flattered that you’ve been waiting all this time with bated breath for my next plunge into musical genius, please allow me to advise you not to wait too much longer. And I might also point out that what I’ve been doing with my time for the past five years is, quite simply, none of your business.’

  ‘It is my business!’ she retorted, highly incensed. ‘It’s the business of everyone who ever heard you sing and loved your music. You can’t just throw it away! You have an obligation—’

  ‘I have nothing,’ he interrupted shortly, and then the sharp lines on his face smoothed out into a martyred sigh and he suggested, ‘But if you insist upon finishing this incredibly boring conversation could we at least do it in a more ventilated area? I might be able to tolerate your presence for a few more minutes, but if I don’t get out of this room pretty soon I’ll certainly choke on the smoke.’

  She glared at him. ‘Were you always such a bastard, or is it a recent refinement?’

  ‘Recent,’ he admitted mildly, and started across the room.

  Lauren did not hesitate about accompanying him. She was self-conscious about the limp, which was made even worse by the high-heeled sandals she was wearing. Shane Holt noticed her difficulty and slowed his gait, but that only embarrassed her and annoyed her more.

  The noise and bright gaiety of the party receded into the cool, clear night as they crossed the flagstone porch. He started down the steps towards the still, silent lawn, and she followed him. But on the first step she tripped, or her knee simply gave way, and she muffled a cry as she started to fall.

  His clasp on her elbow was firm and warm, easily guiding her to her own sense of balance again. He inquired, ‘Are you all right?’

  She bit her lip against pain and humiliation and managed briefly, ‘Yes.’

  ‘I noticed you were limping.’ There was a new inflection to his voice now, or perhaps it was simply the absence of his customary sarcasm. Lauren was too embarrassed and too impatient with herself to care one way or the other. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She drew her arm away quickly. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Do you want to sit down?’

  ‘No!’ her retort was sharp, her posture stiff. ‘I told you, it’s nothing. I’m fine.’

  He looked at her for a moment, then he said casually, ‘Then you don’t mind if I do.’ He lowered himself gracefully to the second step, looped his arms about his knees, and simply sat there, looking peacefully out over the silent lawn. Lauren had no choice but to follow.

  She still did not have full flection in her knee, and sitting, especially upon so low an object as the step, was an awkward and clumsy process at best. Shane Holt did not offer to help; in fact he did not appear to even notice her struggle, and Lauren, wrapped up in her own embarrassment and impatience, was nonetheless relieved that she did not have his mockery to contend with on top of everything else.

  When she was finally settled, her right knee stretched out stiffly and somewhat uncomfortably before her, she did not trust herself to speak for a while. She was afraid he would notice what a great physical effort such a simple thing as sitting had required of her, and she did not think she could take another one of his humiliating remarks just then. So she gave herself time to regain her composure and steady her breathing by examining his profile in the shadowed reflection of the window lights.

  She did not really like him better with the beard, she realised as she took the time to really look at him. He had a fine face, strong and well-defined, with character lines she had never noticed before from the album covers—or perhaps they had simply been hidden by the beard. The nose was sharp and irregular, as though it might have been broken at some time, but its slightly uneven shape only made it more interesting. His mouth was full and attractive, and she could easily imagine those lips curving into a gentle smile, only the deep lines on either side told her they did not do so often. The eyes ... it was the eyes, she realised, which had bothered her on the first meeting, which made him seem so different from his photographs and from the way she remembered him. His eyes had once been gentle and dreamy, sensuously shaded by thick lashes and possessing the perpetual hint of a far-away smile. There was a hardness there now which was incongruous with what she knew of him, and the look of a man who has seen too much too soon and cannot forget. In repose, as he was now, it was an-almost haunted look, and it made her uneasy.

  She had to break the silence. ‘So what happened to you?’ she demanded. ‘Did success go to your head? Did you make so much money you got in trouble with the I.R.S.? Did you just get bored? Crack under the pressure? What?’

  He stirred lazily and leaned back on one elbow, looking up at the mountains silhouetted in the crystal-clear net of stars. ‘All of the above,’ he replied.

  Lauren shook her head firmly. ‘I won’t accept that. No one can just walk away from something like that. You can’t just turn your back on a talent—not when it’s born into you, like your love of music was.’ How well, how achingly well, she knew that.

  The glance he gave her in the uncertain light was sharp, but it lasted no more than a second before he turned his eyes back to the stars. And his voice was mild. ‘You seem to know a great deal about me, Miss Davis.’

  ‘I think I do,’ she said softly, but she was really thinking about herself. ‘Enough to know that the gift for music, the need to perform, is not something you can take up or put down at will. You see, it doesn’t really belong to you at all, you belong to it, and whether or not to use it is never really your choice.’

  There was a long, very still silence. Even the music which came from inside the house momentarily stopped and the tree frogs suddenly ceased their raucous chirping. But when at last Shane Holt spoke his voice was curt, and icy cold. He said, ‘That’s a pretty philosophy, but fortunately it doesn’t apply to me. The music business didn’t agree with me, so I got out, that’s all.’

  She could sense tension, coiled like an animal ready to spring, in every line of his body, and with each word he spoke he had seemed to withdraw further from her. She should have been warned, a cautious person would have left well enough alone, but Lauren thought of all the songs which would remain forever unborn, all the audiences which could never be held spellbound by the magic he created, and she said, ‘No.’ Her voice was soft, but the firm shake of her head determined. ‘You can’t mean that. Not the man who wrote Midnight Melody and Passages—it was more than just a business to you. You can’t just decide you don’t like it any more and quit.’

  His eyes glittered dangerously in the crystal starlight. ‘I can,’ he returned smoothly, ‘do anything I like.’

  She looked at him, at the hard lines of his face and the cold, distant eyes, and she did not want to believe it, but she knew it was true. The man behind the beautiful music was not a reflection of the soul of his art. She would never have thought it was possible that something so delicate and genuine could come from someone so harsh and unfeeling; it broke every rule she had ever imagined she knew about creativity and talent. And still she shook her head slowly as though fighting the obvious while she was forced to admit painfully, wonderingly, ‘You’re not the same. You’re not the same at all.’

  Shane Holt stood abruptly, fury and impatience in his eyes, and lashed back at her, ‘Get that heartbroken look out of your eyes, it doesn’t impress me a bit. It’s not my fault that you built me up into some sort of god, and I won’t be responsible for the fact that you’ve found the truth to be less than what you expected. What you see is what you get, and that’s my final word on the subject.’

  He turned sharply to go back inside, but then he looked back at her. ‘You’re a pesky little brat, Miss Davis,’ he said darkly. ‘I hope to see as little as possible of you before I leave.’

  In a moment she heard the door open on the laughter and music inside, and then slam again. She drew her one knee up and wrapped her arms about it, resting her cheek against the wool of her slacks and fighting the urge to cry. She felt
empty and bereft inside, as though she had just lost her best friend—or worse, as though her best friend had just betrayed her. For that was what Shane Holt had become to her, in the fantasy world of his music—her best friend. He had seen her through the dark times, he had celebrated her victories. He had promised order and meaning to life when she could not see it for herself. He had understood her as no one had ever done, he had made her believe in things untouchable—things like hope, love, a better tomorrow. Now she discovered it had all been a lie.

  She wished Van had never brought her here. She wished she had never met Shane Holt, she wished she could have gone on thinking he was dead or living in Brazil or anything ... anything other than the truth. She thought of all those times when his music had been her only refuge against the black depression—when just knowing that there was someone in the world with a soul so pure and a mind so perfect had given her the strength to go on. Now she did not have anything left.

  Yet he was right. She had built him up and made him immortal—all she had ever known of him had been a contrivance of her mind. How could she be angry with him for turning out to be human?

  She wasn’t angry with him, she realised bleakly, as much as she was with herself for ever having been such a fool. For a brief time this evening while fighting with him the despair which had haunted her since the accident had disappeared, but now it all came back. In the space of six months she had lost two dreams and all her illusions, and it did not seem fair.

  CHAPTER TWO

  By the next morning Lauren had made a cautious peace with herself regarding Shane Holt. After all, she was twenty-six years old and should have outgrown the stage of adolescent crushes years ago. She had been disappointed before, and she would not let this disillusionment crush her. Shane Holt was still the least of her problems.

  Marie and Van were in the kitchen when Lauren came down, and Marie was just putting breakfast on the table. It was a bright, clear morning, as evidenced through the wide bay window which encased the breakfast area, and the mountains seemed to have moved during the night and deposited themselves right in Van’s back yard. The cobalt sky and the emerald grass were the perfect frame for the riotous colours of the trees in the valley beyond—a panoramic sweep of orange, gold, scarlet, russet and purple. Those colours were reflected in the bright interior of the kitchen, which was done in the unlikely combination of orange and scarlet—orange plaid wallpaper, bright orange appliances, red pots and pans and scarlet cushions on the breakfast booth, with a pot of paper poppies on the table. The walls which weren’t papered were covered with gleaming pine panelling, and the entire effect was guaranteed to chase away drowsiness and set the blood to rushing for a new day. Simply walking into the kitchen, seeing the beautiful view from the window and smelling the good breakfast smells, had the effect of vanishing all hints of depression for Lauren, and all thoughts of Shane Holt—at least temporarily.