A Masterful Man

entered the water, then had some swimming lessons in the gentle swell. Ned's was a protected beach, unlike Blinkys. Then they put their shoes on and went over to inspect the colony of Sooty Terns that made their home among the rocks at the foot of Malabar Hill on the northern end of Ned's Beach.

'It's amazing how close you can get to them, isn't it?' 'Boy!' Candice said admiringly. 'There's hundreds of them.'

'I should have brought my camera,' Davina said ruefully.

They had an ice-cream on the way home, and had just got off their bikes to walk up the last hill when Steve Warwick pulled up behind them.

'Well, girls,' he said lightly, 'I couldn't have come at a better time. What have you two been up to?'

Candice told him enthusiastically as he hitched their bikes on to the back of the Land Rover, and he watched her glowing little face for a moment then raised an eyebrow at Davina. 'You've done well, by the sound of it, Mrs Hastings-my compliments.'

'What does that mean?' Candice asked as she climbed into the back seat.

'Nothing at all,' he replied and drove off.

Davina said nothing at all.

Candice, on encountering her grandmother when they got home, said plenty, however, still in the same enthusiastic vein, and caused that lady to regard Davina thoughtfully.

Which was probably why she wasn't as successful at ducking out of dinner, she reflected later.

'I insist you join us for this meal, Davina,' Lavinia said grandly, sweeping into the kitchen about ten minutes before Davina was due to dish up.

'Thank you, but-'

'But me no buts, my dear. I too am a person who knows my own mind and I'm about to set another place at the table.' She pulled open a drawer and clanked cutlery vigorously. 'Has Steven made any mention of you eating separately?'

'No, it's entirely my own decision, Mrs Warwick. I have certain practices when I'm on a job, and this is one of them.'

Lavinia snorted. 'Then I'll get him to ask you himself.'

'Ask her what?' Steve Warwick strolled into the kitchen.

His grandmother placed her hands on her hips. 'This silly girl insists on eating on her own. I've decided I won't even hear of it.'

'She is the housekeeper; it's probably a fairly common practice for housekeepers not to-'

'There are housekeepers and housekeepers,' Lavinia interrupted. 'It's perfectly plain to me that Davina is a rather superior kind of housekeeper but, that aside, who are we to stand on ceremony?'

'I'm simply slayed by your logic, beloved,' Steve Warwick murmured, and turned to Davina, amusement twisting his lips. 'It's up to you.'

'How can you be so lily-livered, Steven? Tell her to come!'

'Davina.' There was open laughter in his eyes now. 'Could you please see your way to rescuing me from this little contretemps?'

Davina breathed exasperatedly. 'Very well.'

'That's my girl,' he murmured, and swung back to his grandmother. 'Happy now?'

'Extremely, although why I had to go to all those lengths-'

'Come and have a drink, Lavinia,' he interrupted, and led her out of the kitchen.

'Why do I have the feeling I've strayed into a madhouse?' Davina muttered to herself.

'Probably because you and I are the only two sane people in the place.' Davina jumped. Steve was standing right behind her. 'Why do you keep doing that?' she said irately. 'I came back for some ice-I was not creeping up on you, if that's what you thought. But you know, I complimented you on Candice this afternoon-may I now say that to have impressed my grandmother the way you have is… extremely impressive. How did you do it?' He looked at her, his eyes dancing with devilry.

'I… she seems to think I know my own mind, which is something she admires in a person, apparently,' Davina said carefully.

'Well, she's right about that, I can vouch for it,' he said ruefully. 'But I also have the feeling that, were she to know the implacability of…certain of your mental processes, she would take a very different view of things.' Davina frowned. 'What do you mean?' 'I think,' he drawled, 'I'll let you work that one out for yourself, Mrs Hastings-I see you're no longer wearing your wedding-ring, incidentally.' Davina glanced down at her hand. 'No. I… no.' 'Well, that might set the cat among the pigeons but- who knows?' And he withdrew the silver ice bucket from the fridge and walked out with it.

Davina stared after him, shook her head dazedly once then thought, It is a madhouse, and you're wrong about one thing-I might be the only sane person in it.

The next couple of days proved several things to Davina. While she wouldn't exactly accuse Loretta of being a lousy mother, she was certainly a bit unhandy at it. She seemed not to be aware that if you laid down rules, you needed to stick to them, with the result, or so it appeared to Davina, that a lot of Candice's tantrums arose from sheer confusion. And it appeared to her that Lavinia exploited this quite shamelessly at times. But there was also very genuine affection for the child.

As for the animosity between the two Mrs Warwicks, while Loretta never appeared to be too fazed by her mother-in-law's barbed remarks, she could always be relied upon to retaliate in a lazy yet telling way. But more and more Davina got the feeling that behind Loretta's lazy smile and undoubtedly lazy ways at times there lurked shrewdness and intelligence. Of the fact that she had any intention of converting her mother-in-law to a Dutchman, there was little evidence. At times she amused Steve, at times she exasperated him, but there were no overt displays of trying to engage his interest with a view to matrimony.

So for a few days Davina ran the household successfully, and worked her way discreetly through the minefield of the Lavinia-Loretta saga by taking Candice off their hands as much as possible. She took the little girl on some photographic expeditions, back to Malabar where they shot the Sooty Terns, to the swamp at the Blinkys end of the runway and out on a glass-bottomed boat expedition where they snorkelled together over the coral in the lagoon and marvelled at the fish-and made Davina long to own an underwater camera. Sometimes, they just got off their bikes and sat in the lush grass and absorbed the views and the lovely clear air.

It did dawn on Davina during these days that Lavinia was trying to find out as much as she could about her background, also that she was rather wily about eliciting information. So that, without Davina quite knowing how she'd done it, Lavinia came to know where she'd been to school-and approved-to know that she'd spent six months overseas with her mother when she'd left school-again approved-to know all about her catering course and to know a bit about her photographic ambitions. This she approved of vigorously. She also managed to draw forth Davina's taste in music, literature and art, her knowledge of current affairs and her opinions and she once said that Davina was obviously well-brought-up, well-informed and had most of the ingredients to be a woman of style and perception as well as amazingly capable. But, beyond a lurking amusement at this process, Davina hadn't given it much thought- for one thing she simply hadn't the time. For another, a lot of her spare thoughts seemed to centre around Steve Warwick, to her dismay, but there was nothing she could do about it, she found.

He seemed to have taken her at her word and she was horrified to find herself remembering what he'd said about pique. Was she piqued? Surely not. So what was she…? But that was even harder to deal with, unless, she thought starkly once, you admitted to yourself that you just couldn't forget the feel of his arms, his lips… certainly not when you virtually lived in the same house with him, encountered him several times a day and so could never free yourself from the impact of his strong, streamlined body, his hands… Stop it, she told herself. Just… stop it.

But she got caught more than thinking it once. He came home one day with a fine catch of kingfish; it was a beautiful evening, so she scrapped her plans for a veal casserole for dinner-it would keep anyway-and while he lit the barbecue she filleted the fish and made salads. They had a wonderful barbecue beneath the Southern Cross. For once, Loretta and Lavinia seemed able to bear each other's presence; Steve asked Candice to help him cook the fish and she grew almost visibly in stature. But Davina was suddenly attacked by a sense of the vastness of the ocean all around them, and her general insignificance in the great plan of things. It came on towards the end of the meal,