it.”
“Don’t you think he already knows life is harsh?” she cried. “He just lost two people he loved.”
“He still has his father, and eventually you’ll have to let him come with me. If you’re sensible, you’ll face the inevitable now.”
“I don’t believe it
“And just what kind of miracle do you think is going to turn up?” Gavin asked skeptically.
“Anything might happen. The court might decide that Peter belongs with me, where he’s happy. Or you might decide the same thing.”
“That will never happen,” he snapped.
He turned on his heel and went back to the car. When he reached Strand House he went in search of Peter. He found him making up feed with Grim, the two of them working quietly together, anticipating each other’s movements. It was clear they’d done this often before. It was Grim who looked up and saw Gavin, but he was sure Peter had known he was there and simply refused to acknowledge him. “Looks like you’re wanted,” Grim said.
Reluctantly, it seemed to Gavin, Peter lifted his head. His eyes were distant. “I’d like to talk to you,” Gavin said.
It was unnerving the way a child could be so docile, while still shutting out his father. He set down what he was doing and came toward Gavin, but there was no communication in his manner. His obedience was simply another form of armor.
“Look, I know you think I was hard on you just now,” Gavin said awkwardly. “Perhaps I was. Harder than I meant to be. It’s this place. I’m not comfortable here, and it makes everything wrong between us. We can’t get to know each other properly.”
Peter’s lips didn’t move, but his eyes said, “Why not?”
“Because we can’t talk proper…I mean, I need to be able to talk to you without feeling you’re going to run off to Norah as soon as I’ve finished. She’s a fine person but-we’re father and son. We may not have seen much of each other, but we’re still father and son. We always will be. Nothing can ever change that.” Perhaps he said the last words a little too firmly.
Flick appeared from nowhere and brushed against Peter’s leg. The boy reached down and scratched her red coat absently. “You might look at me while I’m talking to you,” Gavin said tensely, and Peter straightened up at once. But his very obedience seemed like a kind of snub. It was as if he were saying, “I’ll obey you in every detail, to cover the fact that my heart isn’t with you.”
Gavin felt a snub keenly, and despite his good intentions it put an edge on his voice. “This place is nothing but a fool’s paradise, and nobody ever gained anything from living in a fool’s paradise. You’ve got to learn how to fight the world like a man, and you’ll only learn that with me.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he had an eerie feeling-as if the world had sideslipped. The air seemed to sing about his ears. It was as if he were living this moment for the second time, and the first time was there with him, still living, endlessly repeating. He gave himself a little shake. It was the first time he’d ever experienced a sensation of deja vu, and it baffled him.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” he demanded. “I don’t want my son to be a milksop, and that’s what you’ll be if you stay here.”
Unexpectedly Peter turned and looked at him with a look Gavin had never seen before. For the first time his eyes weren’t distant and withdrawn, but angry and defiant. “Don’t look at me like that,” Gavin shouted. As Peter began to turn away, something snapped within him. “Don’t turn away from me. I’m talking to you.” He seized his son by the shoulders and forcibly swung him round, shaking him slightly. “Don’t,” he shouted. “Don’t do that. I’m your father. Why can’t you…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t really know what he was trying to say. He had an overwhelming impulse to pull the child against him and enfold him in a gigantic hug, but a self-control perfected too long ago to remember restrained him.
“All right,” he said with a sigh. “I’m sorry. Run along now.”
He turned sharply and walked away. If he’d looked back he might have seen his son watching him with a longing expression that would have given him hope. But he didn’t look back.
That evening at sunset Norah walked down near the shore. She could hear the waves splashing as the tide, which had come in, began to withdraw. She walked until she saw Gavin sitting on a rock staring out over the water. “You weren’t there for supper,” she said.
“I didn’t want any.”
“If it’s any interest to you, Peter’s very unhappy.”
“Of course it interests me, but he doesn’t want my comfort. If I reach out to him, he runs away. You know that.”
“Perhaps that’s because when you reach, you grab. You might get further by waiting for him to come to you.”
“I could wait forever for that,” he said bitterly.
“Well, what do you gain by sitting out here sulking.”
“I’m not sulking. I came back to get my camcorder, but of course it was too late.”
She sat down beside him. “What camcorder?”
“I bought one in London. I wanted to film Peter. I’ve missed so much of his growing up, and I thought I could catch him now. I brought it down the beach this afternoon. I was going to show it to both of you. But I must have dropped it somewhere.”
“Well, you can always get another.”
He shrugged. “What’s the point? He’ll probably hate the idea, anyway.”
She considered this. “If you just point the camera at him he probably will hate it,” she agreed. “Little boys don’t like being photographed or filmed. It embarrasses them. Didn’t you try to get out of it when you were a child and your father wanted to take snaps of you?”
He gave a mirthless laugh. “He never wanted to. He’d have called it a sentimental waste of time.”
“And your mother?”
“I can barely remember her.”
Norah nodded, as if she’d understood something. “If you want to film Peter, why don’t you tell him it’s Flick you’re interested in?” she said.
“How would that help?”
She sighed. “Hunter, sometimes you can be painfully slow. You ask Peter to hold Flick up for the camera, then Peter’s so busy thinking of Flick that he forgets you’re filming him, too. That way he won’t be self-conscious and you’ll get what you want. Everyone’s happy. There, I’ll make you a present of that suggestion.”
“Why?” he asked, watching her carefully. “Why make me a present of something that might give me the breakthrough to Peter? Don’t you want him to stay here with you, after all?”
“Of course I want him to stay here, but only if he wants to. I don’t want him opting for me only because he never got to know
She said the last word significantly, and Gavin looked up at her. “Again?” he asked.
“Oh, of course, I was forgetting. You don’t remember, do you?”
He managed a wry grin. “Perhaps I do. I suppose I ought to thank you.”
“Well, don’t kill yourself doing it. Just don’t get wet. I won’t rescue you a second time.”
“Thank you for the first time, anyway. I could have got pneumonia.”
“Don’t pile it on,” she said, laughing. “You might have caught a small chill, but no more.”
“No, I’d have caught a big chill. Unfortunately it’s the way I’m made. The slightest little thing and I go down with something nasty.”
She cast a curious glance at his big, sturdy frame, redolent of health and vitality, looking as if it could withstand a siege. Who would ever have dreamed it housed this secret weakness? “It must be a great inconvenience to a tycoon,” she said, “wheeling and dealing-and the things tycoons do-all threatened by the sniffles.”
“I don’t have sniffles. I take things to hide the symptoms until I have time to be sick.”
“And when is that?”
