The Vital Spark

  The Vital Spark by Angela Carson

  Almost the first thing Haydn Scott had ever said to Lee was that it was dangerous to cross his path, and the more she saw of him the more she could see what he meant ! She had no wish to cross his path—but how could she avoid it, when he was encroaching more and more on her life ? And why was he encroaching on her life anyway? Lee was convinced that he intended to take over the market garden business for which she and her brother had worked so hard; Jon might trust him, but she certainly didn't! But what worried her more than anything was—did Haydn intend to take over her private life as well ? And if so, how could she

  stop him ?

  printed in Great Britain

  All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the Author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the Author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  First published 1979

  This edition 1979

  ISBN 0 263 73075 1

  CHAPTER ONE

  `WE could do with a delivery like this every day if your crop will stand it, Miss Ramsay.'

  `Why the sudden demand?' Lee opened the back doors of the Minivan and stood aside while the plump little greengrocer bent down to lift the first stack of tomato trays into his arms. She eyed him with some trepidation. He was short, as well as stout, and three trays one on top of the other came up to his chin. Lee hoped he would not try to add a fourth, and so risk blocking his vision. In an endeavour to save himself an extra journey across the pavement into his well stocked shop, he would court disaster if he tripped over the pavement edge, and she was not too sure who would then be liable to pay for the fruit. Polrewin could ill afford to pay for wasted produce.

  `It's that caravan site further down the coast.' He deposited the first load, and came back for more. 'These toms are just the right size.' He peered through the clean paper cover that fitted like a hat over each tray, with its oblong transparent window in the middle to show up the contents as well as protect them, and the name of the flower farm emblazoned on the side.

  `They're not very big,' Lee said doubtfully, 'but they are a nice flavour.' She felt proud of their first crop of tomatoes. They represented a good deal of hard work, as well as the first real return on the capital she and Jon had poured into Polrewin.

  `The flavour's fine,' the greengrocer agreed, 'but it's the number to a pound that sells them. Most of the folk who come caravanning have got children with them and they don't want a big tomato. Kids would rather have a medium sized one each than share a big one between them. It saves arguing about who's got the biggest half, see?' he smiled, with the resigned wisdom of a father of three.

  Tad takes the van down there every day now, and the

  stuff sells like hot cakes.' Betty, the eldest, sauntered out to the front of the shop, prepared for a friendly chat, and Lee smiled. It would be beneficial to Betty's figure if she ate more of her father's fruit and salad than whatever was responsible for the superfluous pounds that pressed against the seams of her flimsy dress, and threatened the stitching's desperate endeavours to hold the two sides together.

  `A caravan holiday would be fun.' Lee watched patiently as trays of lettuce followed the tomatoes until the interior of the van became a bare space, and the greengrocer slammed the back doors shut.

  `That's the lot, Miss Ramsay.' He scribbled busily for a minute or two, then ripped off the top sheet from his pad and carefully adjusted the carbon paper for the next copy. `Here's your tally for this lot. I'll settle with your brother at the end of the month, as usual.' He nodded in a friendly fashion and bustled off, and Lee carefully tucked the tally into her jeans pocket as she sorted out her ignition key and turned towards the van. It was invaluable to herself and Jon that Mr Dunn did, in fact, settle promptly at the end of each month, without argument or delay, and she blessed the fact that Polrewin had been fortunate enough to capture the greengrocer's regular order. It had been a major factor in keeping their new venture afloat until now.

  'Caravanning's all right, I suppose.' Betty Dunn strolled across the pavement with her, not to be denied her chat. `Me, I'd sooner go to one of those places on the French coast. Where you can sunbathe, and get a tan, like.' She pressed plump hands to her fluffy blonde head and sighed. `Not that I'd cut much of a dash in a bikini,' she admitted ruefully. 'Not like you.' She eyed Lee's diminutive figure and slender waistline with unmalicious envy. 'Some folks have all the luck,' she grinned. 'There's you, with a tan most folks have to pay a fortune in air fares to get, and here's me lives in the same place, and all I do when the sun shines is go red, and peel.'

  `It's having black hair, it makes you tan more easily,' Lee offered what comfort she could. 'And if all you do is peel in a heatwave, there's no point in spending money going abroad,' she consoled with a laugh.

  `Ah, but there's always a chance you'd meet someone special if you went to that place where they hold the film festival,' Betty said hopefully.

  `You mean Cannes?' Lee's attention was on her ignition key. 'I don't suppose the stars have much time for sunning themselves on the beach when they go there, they'd be too busy working,' she hazarded, not really interested in Betty's romantic daydreams.

  'naps, but at least they'd be there,' the plump blonde was determined to hold on to her dreams at all costs. 'Now here, you never get anyone like that,' she grumbled discontentedly.

  `We get yachts, and private boats coming into the harbour,' Lee felt obliged to cheer her up. 'And plenty of holidaymakers all the season, to say nothing of artists and photographers, and so on.' Surely the influx of summer visitors to the attractive little fishing town should be diverse enough to satisfy even Betty, despite her romantic notions, Lee thought, hiding her amusement with difficulty.

  `Ah, but not anybody special,' her companion persisted. `Not any film stars like they get in France, or—or—I don't know, though,' her tone changed, and she perked up visibly. `Now, he's more like it !' she breathed ecstatically.

  Lee turned and followed the direction of her gaze. Betty belonged to the wrong generation, she reflected; and resigned herself to being trapped for the next ten minutes or so, instead of making the early start back home that she intended. The fluffy-headed nineteen-year-old would have been better fitted to the era that packed the stalls of the local cinemas, and hero-worshipped the celluloid lives of the Hollywood screen lovers. Instead, she had to be content with the local bingo hall, and obtain her vicarious pleasures through the pages of the brightly coloured magazines that decorated the racks of the paper shop-cum-tobacconist next door.

  `That's Vince Merrick, the son of the hotel proprietor.' Lee raised her hand to the tall, fair-haired man of about her own age who was walking across the far side of the pavement where it curved with the bend of the bay. He waved back, his face lighting as he caught sight of Lee, before he

  made a resigned gesture that meant he could not stop, and dived into the door of the local bank. 'Surely you've seen him before?' Vince's fair hair and blue eyes made him acceptable enough to look at, she thought, but she wou
ld not have thought him star quality, even by Betty's unexacting standards.

  Not him. I mean him.' Betty's pointing finger succeeded where her limited vocabulary failed. The one coming off that cabin cruiser—look !'

  Lee obligingly squinted against the dazzle glinting from off the water in the harbour, and looked in the direction Betty indicated. She was just in time to see a tall athletic-looking figure leap lightly from the deck on to the top of the guard rail of a large white cabin cruiser with a broad scarlet band setting off the dazzling white of her paint, and walk nonchalantly, hands in pockets, with a catlike surety of tread along the length of the narrow rail. He scarcely paused as he came to the end of it, and measured the distance between his own boat and the one moored next to it, before he flexed long legs and stepped across the gap, and calmly used the second boat as if it was a public footpath placed there expressly to help him come ashore, though this time he walked on the deck and not on the rail.

  For some reason his cool assumption that he had the right to use other people's boats for such a purpose nettled Lee. `Show-off!' she muttered disparagingly, but nevertheless she watched with more interest, wondering what the self-assured stranger would do when he reached the end of the second deck. The water was still deep between the second boat and the exposed part of the beach, with only a small dinghy lazily moving up and down in the water at the end of a line between himself and dry land.

  `I hope he gets his feet wet,' she muttered vindictively. She did not like holidaymakers who assumed, because they came to Tarmouth for a couple of weeks during the summer, that they were entitled to go where they pleased and do what they liked. The second boat was a fishing smack, and was owned by one of the local families Lee knew.

  `He won't—look, he's pulling the dinghy towards him.'

  Sun glinted on rich, tawny-coloured hair as the man leaned down and pulled at the painter holding the rowboat. A quick tug from hands tanned a dark shade of teak brought it to the desired position, and with another testing tug at the other end of the rope where it was fixed to the rail, the tall stranger swung lightly over the edge of the fishing smack. His feet sought and found the length of the dangling rope, and he slid down it and into the dinghy. His movements had the accustomed grace of someone who had done the same thing a thousand times before, and with easy familiarity he balanced lightly in the rocking boat, and used one oar as a scull. A quick pull sent the dinghy the full length of its tether towards the beach. Before it snagged against the taut rope and upset his balance, he foiled Lee's unexpressed hope and leapt across the intervening shallows, and gained the sanctuary of the dry pebbles on the other side.

  `Ooh, I wouldn't mind him for my partner in the dancing,' Betty breathed on a gusty sigh, referring, Lee knew, to the forthcoming traditional procession that lent a yearly air of carnival to the little town, and was an added attraction to people in holiday mood who revelled in the colourful floats, and the chance to join in the gay gyrations along the crowded, narrow streets. The locals enjoyed it just as much, she suspected, despite their would-be indifferent attitude that it was a show put on purely for the sake of the holiday visitors. Certainly most of them managed to put in an appearance at the more formal dance held in the evening after the procession, at the Royal Anchor Hotel.

  `He'd probably tread all over your feet,' she assured Betty, and although he was out of earshot, the stranger looked up as he reached the top of the harbour steps, almost as if he sensed they were discussing him. His eyes met Lee's dark gaze full on, and she felt a distinct sense of shock. They were as tawny as his hair.

  He's like a lion, she thought. And for some reason, she shivered, although the sun was hot enough on her bare arms. Not a lion with a mane; he wasn't of the jungle variety. The thoughts passed unbidden across her mind. This man was more like a—a—mountain lion. Yes, that

  was it. A creature of the high, open places, cat-footed, and supremely sure of himself And when he wanted to be, completely ruthless.... She tore her eyes away, aware of a strange feeling of breathlessness, as if she had been running. She focussed out into the harbour, trying to make it seem as if she had been looking out there all the time, and the stranger had merely got in the way of her gaze when he reached the top of the steps. The thing she focussed on drove the rest of the breath out of her lungs in a dismayed ejaculation. Her dark eyes took on a look of sheer consternation, and she opened her mouth to call out.

  `Don't shout. You'll unbalance him if he looks up.'

  How it happened she did not know. She did not see him move. But somehow the tawny stranger was by her side, his strong, long fingers gripping her arm, and his own eyes turned to watch the small boy busily trying to emulate his own performance along the top of the guard rail of the fishing smack.

  `He'll fall.' It came out in a frightened whisper.

  `He will if you've got no more sense than to shout at him.' The stranger's tone was taut, commanding her silence. `The only thing that's keeping him on the top of that rail is concentration, and sheer good luck,' he added grimly.

  `You're hurting.' She became conscious of his fingers, digging into the soft flesh of her arm above her elbow, bruising, with a clamp like a vice.

  `I daren't risk you shouting at him.' He loosed her arm immediately, and she reached up and rubbed it with her opposite hand, her eyes angrily inspecting the red weals marking the place where his fingers had gripped her.

  `If the child falls on to the dinghy,' he continued as if she had not spoken, 'he's likely to break his neck.'

  `If he falls into the harbour, he's just as likely to drown,' she snapped.

  `I hardly think so.' He measured the distance between himself and the fishing smack with a knowledgeable eye. `I'd reach him before he went down for the third time.'

  His tone conveyed the same arrogant assurance that brought him ashore by such an unorthodox route rather than bother to unleash the dinghy from his own vessel, and

  implied that he was quite capable of coping with any such eventuality with ease. Anger simmered inside Lee as she rubbed her illused arm in silence. The child—he looked about seven or eight years old, and she did not recognise him as a local, he probably belonged to a holidaymaker—came to the end of the rail, and more by luck than good judgement fixed himself to the rope and slid down it into the dinghy in a passable imitation of the man by her side. True, he descended with more speed and less caution than his predecessor, and he reached the dinghy in an undignified rush. The rowboat tipped alarmingly, and Lee caught her breath, but the boy hung on like a limpet and manoeuvred himself over the side, and into safety. He stopped there for a second or two, and she saw him hold up the palms of his hands and inspect them.

  `That'll teach him not to grip hold of a rope so tightly when he slides down it.' The hint of a chuckle sounded in the stranger's voice, and Lee snapped,

  `If you hadn't shown off by walking along the guard rail the way you did, the boy wouldn't have tried to copy you. His hands are probably rubbed sore by now,' she flared angrily.

  `I don't expect to guard my every movement in case someone else's brat tries to copy it.' His tone was cold, and he turned on her a look where anger lurked. 'If people have children they should be prepared to look after them. And if his hands are sore, it's nothing to what his seat is going to be, any minute now.'

  Before Lee could divine his intention, he turned and strode back across the harbour wall, and ran down the steps to the beach. He glanced once at the boy, who with commendable common sense, Lee thought, ignored the oar, which was three times his size anyway, and lay across the side of the dinghy and used his short legs as a means of propulsion away from the high side of the fishing smack. With a hefty double kick, he sent his transport skimming shorewards.

  Unlike the man, he forgot that the painter would snap tight at the end of the tether, and the resulting jerk tumbled him into the bottom of the dinghy, but he had

  achieved his objective, and with a grin of triumph on his freckled face he jumped out on to
the beach. His legs were too short to span the shallows, and he waded the last couple of feet through the water with happy enjoyment. He did not notice the tawny-haired man waiting for him at the water's edge.

  `He'll tick him off, good and proper, I expect.' Betty sounded awestruck, and automatically Lee followed her to the edge of the harbour wall. She could not hear what the man said to the boy, the distance between them was too far for more than a murmur of his voice to reach them, but she saw him point sternly towards the rowboat, and the boy's grin vanished. With lightning speed, he twisted away from the retribution that he evidently guessed was about to fall upon him, but he had not gone two steps before firm fingers reached out and grasped his brightly coloured tee-shirt by the slack, and hauled him back again. Instantly, a small, soaking wet sandal lashed out. The kick missed, the length of the man's arm was twice that of the boy's leg, but a stream of sandy water splattered down his immaculate cream slacks.

  `He'll get his bottom smacked for that, for sure,' Betty prophesied as the man pulled the boy towards him with a sharp, angry movement, and Lee cried out,

  `Don't you dare to touch him! Leave him alone, he's only a child.' She drew in a shaky breath. 'The big bully !' she muttered, in a furious aside to Betty. 'He should pick on someone his own size....'

  Her words died in her throat as the man turned. Two cold, tawny eyes stared at her for a second or two, then without a word he deliberately crooked his knee, bent the boy across it, and administered two sharp slaps to the small denim-covered behind. The cracks of them, instantly followed by the boy's anguished wail, echoed across the harbour, and both Lee and Betty winced. Unconsciously Lee's hand felt the seat of her own denims, with urgent sympathy for the small victim, and she hastily pulled it away again as the stranger let the boy go and strode back towards the steps.