Age of Consent Read online

  AGE OF CONSENT

  by

  VICTORIA GORDON

  © Victoria Gordon 1985

  For Helen-Fred—it must be.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The voice on the telephone was as welcome as it was unexpected, rumbling like distant, wind-driven surf and assaulting her ear with neither greeting nor salutation to soften the assault.

  Welcome? Yes, oh yes! But so totally unexpected and so direct in its inquisition that Helen couldn’t have a hope of dissembling, didn’t have any chance at all to cover up.

  ‘Well?’

  That was his second remark; the first had been a brusque, ‘What the hell’s going on up there? And don’t bother trying to think up some piddly little lie; you can’t even lie effectively by letter, much less over the ‘phone.’

  ‘Oh, Dane,’ It was all she could push past the lump of raw emotion that threatened to choke her, but it was enough to prime the well-spring of tears that flooded from eyes like soft grey velvet.

  ‘If I had my way, I’d have paddled some sense into you years ago,’ was the harsh reply, but Helen knew the harshness was only a vocal disguise for his own emotions, a tool deliberately used to ferret out the blunt, direct answers he needed.

  Normally she’d have traded him flippant reply for brutally direct question, both of them taking pleasure from the exchange, but now ... now she was too close to the end of her rope for any such show of false courage. Blinking back her tears, she tried to choose the words, knowing even as she did so that it was a waste of time. She couldn’t fool Dane Curtis, not even over the ‘phone.

  Couldn’t ... and wasn’t fooling him, not even for a second. She could tell that much by the softening of his voice as he spoke again, not bothering to await her reply to his last barrage.

  ‘Come on ... out with it. I already know you’ve been retrenched, but we’ve both been there before without all this trauma. So what else? Pregnant? Jilted? All hung up over some bloke with a wife and six kids at home? Or something really serious?’

  It was so typical of him that she had to laugh past her tears. Nobody but Dane would ... could ... be so honestly caring and yet so easily able to dismiss the seriousness of issues most young women would consider very serious indeed.

  ‘What if I said all three ... and more?’ she countered bravely, knowing the answer before hearing it from a voice she’d not heard in more than two long years.

  ‘There isn’t much left except being broke and knowing it’ll be twins or triplets,’ he replied with a quiet chuckle. ‘And even then I’m sure we could find some solution. If that was the problem, which it isn’t ... at least not totally. So what is it, love?’

  And now that voice was muted, softened by a love she’d never questioned, never doubted in all the six years she’d known him.

  ‘Well I’m not pregnant, he isn’t married, and thinking back on it, even the jilting part doesn’t really surprise me,’ she said, playing for time to extract the exact words, the right words to try and explain. As if it were really necessary.

  ‘So you’re broke and out of a job ... again. And too stubborn and independent to ask for help, as usual,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I wonder about you, child. And I suppose you’re up to your ears in debt, too, or is that next week?’

  ‘Probably,’ Helen replied, then went on to explain at some length exactly what the trouble was. It wasn’t easy, and indeed she couldn’t have explained it to anyone but Dane, not even to her mother. Least of all to her mother, who would only see it as yet another lever in her incessant campaign to draw Helen back to the destructive, emotion-baited trap of the family home.

  No, she could never explain to her mother the soul-destroying trauma of being retrenched—never fired! — from four different jobs in less than two years. Always, or so she’d thought at first, because of the traditional last on-first off policies common to the journalistic media throughout Australia.

  At first she’d accepted the situation far better than the first time she’d been retrenched, five-and-a-half years before when some distant management decision had chopped down the weekly suburban paper on which both she and Dane had been employed.

  That very first time she’d been stunned for days, simply unable to accept the situation, and then unable not to feel that in some way she, personally, was to blame.

  It had been Dane and his wife Vivian who’d pulled her through that catastrophe, first with gentle kindness and finally with brutal directness, but always with a genuine liking, loving, sincerity.

  Dane, then in his early thirties and with one foot perched precariously on the tight-rope leading to his present career as a successful novelist, had accepted the verdict philosophically, fought to find Helen a place elsewhere in the organisation and then haughtily refused one for himself, choosing instead to go back free-lancing so he’d have time to work on his novels.

  ‘I can afford to play that kind of game; you can’t,’ he’d told her, insisting she take the alternative job at least until something came along that she liked better.

  She’d done so, still dazed by the suddenness of it all, still reeling with the shock and the horrible, empty feeling of being useless, inadequate. Being retrenched, at nineteen, from the second job she’d ever held in her life was, she’d thought at the time, absolutely the worst of catastrophes. Now she was twenty-five, and, it seemed, no less vulnerable than before.

  It was that vulnerability, that yawning, empty feeling of uselessness that threatened her now, and she poured out her feelings into the receptive car that was so many years, so many miles away now, and yet so comfortingly close.

  Four jobs gone in two years. She’d been unable to attend Vivian’s funeral the year before because she’d been out of work and broke and on the move. Dane, not having heard from her in months, was simply unable to contact her until the next time she wrote.

  Once, she’d gone home, seeing in her mother’s pleas for help some logic to returning to the country town where she’d grown up. But the pleas hadn’t been real, or at least not real in the sense of having any validity. They’d been only her mother trying a new tack in her life-long bid to control Helen’s life, to hold her at the controllable, pliable age of sixteen. She’d left again after a fortnight, feeling a frighteningly disturbing combination of hatred and love and pity for the woman who’d borne her and whom, she knew, loved her despite being unable to show it in any fashion Helen could accept.

  But this last retrenchment, especially combined with the immediate lack of interest on the part of a man she thought she loved, had proved to be very nearly the final straw.

  Which was why she hadn’t mentioned either in her letter to Dane a few days earlier. Instead, she’d written her usual quarterly letter, filled with trivia and cunningly worded to disguise the fears. So cunningly worded, obviously, that he’d simply ignored it, choosing instead to read between the lines and begin his own investigation. It would, she realised, have been done very discreetly, very subtly, through tenuous links between contacts she probably didn’t even know he had.

  And very swiftly, considering he’d picked up the essence within days, with her in Brisbane and him, she presumed, on his farm in Tasmania.

  Did he know, as well, that she’d be without a place to live by next week when the owner of the flat she was keeping returned from six months overseas? He hadn’t, but seemed hardly surprised.

  ‘Nothing that happens to you surprises me,’ he replied. ‘I knew from the very beginning that you were a walking disaster area; what I didn’t expect was that you’d never grow out of it.’

  Helen’s reply was a mixture of laughter and tears. She, too, remembered that beginning, the day she’d walked in, green as grass, to start her first day’s work on the short-lived suburba
n weekly. She’d been young, innocent, awash with the incredible naivety which only a convent or a small Australian country town can produce, and broke. Anxious to be accepted, she’d joined the rest of the staff for beer and sandwiches at noon, worked right through until the banks had all closed, and found herself sheepishly admitting at closing time that she had two dollars to her name and hadn’t got round to finding a flat.

  The remark, so ludicrously innocent in retrospect, had drawn expressions of sympathy from everyone but Dane, who had merely stared at her for an eternity through cynical, ice-blue eyes. Eyes that seemed to have seen everything, their ice-blue colour shot with flashes of amber but none, it seemed, of sympathy.

  And yet it had been he who’d muttered softly, ‘Not to worry. I suppose we can manage one more at table tonight and find you a bed until you’re settled.’

  Then, taking her silence for acceptance, he’d phoned Vivian at her office and warned of the impending invasion. That was the first Helen had even known of his marital status. Since that night the Curtises had practically adopted her.

  Dane and Vivian had seen her through tragic love affairs, traffic accidents, traumas with her own family and a seemingly never-ending chain of job changes as she transferred for more money, a different challenge, a different boss.

  Their discipline of her life-style had been low-key to the point of being non-existent, except professionally. There, both of them journalists of long-standing, they had insisted on a true professional attitude. Advice of any sort was freely given but without any strings attached. If she ignored the advice, as she often did, there were no hassles, no complaints, and no ‘I told you so’ when she was proved wrong in her decisions.

  After that first year, their paths had crossed less and less frequently, what with moves to various different cities on both parts. But Helen and Dane had kept in touch by letter, with him letting her set the pace of the interchange, writing as regularly as she chose to do.

  And during the past three years, at least, she’d chosen to write less and less often. At first it was because she knew that it was imperative she become her own person, develop her own individuality, solve her own problems. But latterly, especially since Vivian’s untimely death in a traffic accident, it was because Helen could all too easily wish for herself a closer role in his life, and that wouldn’t work at all.

  ‘Well it doesn’t sound any worse than usual to me,’ he was saying now. ‘Although I suppose you’re wallowing in self-pity and totally convinced that it’s the end of the world.’

  ‘I am not!’ she denied stoutly, lying through her teeth and knowing they both realised that.

  ‘You couldn’t lie straight in bed,’ he growled. ‘What happened to that job you mentioned a few months ago? Somebody leading you down the garden path again, as usual?’

  Helen winced at the accusation. Much as she fancied herself the hardened, cynical, world-wise journalist that Dane, himself, was, she had to admit that in many ways she seemed doomed to face life with her naivety as a fragile, intimidating shield.

  ‘No, I think it was the economy that did that one in,’ she finally replied. And felt the tears spring up again. ‘It’s always the economy; you ought to know that, living where you are. Or has Tasmania finally got away from being the worst state in Australia for unemployment?’

  ‘There’s more good jobs than good journalists,’ he replied, ignoring her question as she’d expected. And then, unexpectedly, ‘Which always makes me wonder why there are so many lousy ones hanging on to them.’

  Helen was honestly astonished at that. It was so totally at odds with the convictions he’d expressed in years past, usually in the process of convincing her not to worry because of having been retrenched or because her current job wasn’t going as she’d hoped.

  But he was continuing before she could reply. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t much matter at this point. So what about the man in it all? Or were you just throwing him in as a red herring?’

  Again, Helen winced, knowing even as she began to explain about Bryce what the reaction would be. Even just hearing Dane’s no-nonsense voice, she realised herself that she’d been a victim of her own naivety once again. Bryce, as second in charge of a public relations firm, had blatantly used his extensive charm to sway Helen, although — and here she was firm in her assertions — it had been only in a personal sense that she’d been swayed. Her journalistic scruples had been too firmly moulded to be at risk.

  Dane’s reply was scathingly acidic. ‘Oh, of course. And I suppose he was also a paid-in-full AJA member, so he could claim to be a fellow journalist as well.’

  Helen didn’t get a chance to reply. Nor did she need to really listen to know what was coming next; she knew only too well his opinion of public relations people being allowed as members of the Australian Journalists’ Association.

  ‘... total contradiction in terms,’ he was saying. ‘Like hookers in a convent. And besides, even if he was a proper journalist — haven’t I always told you to stay away from other journalists? No sane woman would get involved with one; they’re all bastards.’

  Helen sighed. Damn him! He knew as well as she did that for a working journalist, especially a female one, about the only men available were other journalists. Nobody else could abide the ridiculous working hours, much less the dedicated work habits that were required for success. Or, she mused idly, the lack of it, especially in her own case.

  ‘Did you ‘phone all the way up here just to harangue about that?’ she finally demanded. ‘Because if you did ...’

  ‘It’s my ‘phone bill and I’ll harangue about anything I please,’ he interjected. ‘But no, that’s not what I ‘phoned for, so stop trying to change the subject. What I want to know is what you’re going to do now.’

  ‘I ... I don’t honestly know,’ she admitted, realising even as she spoke that she was making the admission to herself as well, and not pleased with that final acceptance.

  ‘That’d be right,’ was the dry rejoinder. ‘I knew I should have sold you into white slavery while you were young enough to be worth something.’ And then, as if he realised that comment had come a shade too close to the bone, ‘You been doing any riding lately, or have you given up horses in favour of jumped-up advertising types?’

  ‘I haven’t been on a horse in about a year,’ she replied wistfully, and realised even as she said it that her entire journalistic career had been at the expense of dealing with horses.

  Helen’s childhood had been spent on a property in central New South Wales, and even after the family’s move to town after her father’s death, she’d continued to maintain an interest in riding. But she’d sold her horses, finally, to pay off some debt or another, and the business of her profession had since then contrived to keep her from having the time for horses ever since.

  ‘Why did you ask that?’ she queried, suddenly suspicious. Dane seldom asked questions without some motive, especially innocuous questions like that one.

  But her own question was now ignored. ‘Not much going for jobs in Brisbane, I gather,’ he was saying. ‘And from what I hear it’s no better down south, unless you fancy shifting to one of the country papers.’

  ‘I’d rather starve,’ Helen scoffed, exaggerating somewhat, but no less emphatic for all that. She’d started her career in a country paper, and to go back to one now, unless in some executive position, would be only a step backward in her own eyes.

  ‘How’s your car going?’ Again, a seemingly innocuous question, but she knew, this time, what he was getting at.

  ‘I sold it last week, and I suspect you knew that,’ she replied calmly. ‘Which is why ... for the moment ... I haven’t any debts, thank you.’

  ‘Well, that’s a change,’ he chuckled. ‘No job, no money, no place to live, but at least no debts. You’re improving, love. Usually you’ve got all four problems at once.’

  Dane’s refusal to take the matter seriously was now beginning to annoy Helen, especially as his call had been suf
ficient already to make her take stock of her problems with considerably more seriousness than he was exhibiting.

  ‘Did you ‘phone up just to rub my nose in it?’ she demanded angrily. ‘Because if you did ...’

  ‘I ‘phoned to see if I could be of help, you silly little twit,’ was the abrasive reply. ‘And just as well, from the sound of things.’

  ‘1 didn’t,’ she interrupted with unnecessary vigour, ‘ask for any help, did I?’

  ‘Not in so many words, perhaps,’ he repHed with infuriating calm. ‘Although from the amount of tripe you stuck into your last letter, it wouldn’t take more than an idiot to guess ...’

  ‘Will you stop it!’ she cried. Angry now. Genuinely angry despite knowing full well he was deliberately goading her, forcing her up from the pit of her own self-pity by methods he knew would work, however temporarily.

  ‘If you insist,’ he replied blandly. ‘But not before I get to the point of this call, which is costing me heaps of money, in case you’re interested.’

  ‘Well then get to the point,’ she snapped. ‘For somebody who’s supposed to be a professional communicator, you beat around the bush worse than anybody I’ve ever known.’

  ‘There, see how much better you feel,’ he laughed. ‘It’s always much easier when you’ve got somebody you can shout at, isn’t it?’

  ‘Just be glad that’s all I can do to you,’ she muttered, anger only partially mollified. ‘If you were here, I’d ...’

  It was his turn to interrupt, ‘Got it backwards as usual,’ he jeered. ‘How about if you were here?’

  ‘I’d give you a knuckle sandwich, for starters,’ she cried, only half understanding and too angry still to think straight. It was only when he didn’t immediately reply that the implication of his question began to sink in. And with the implication ... caution!

  ‘What are you getting at?’ she hissed, suspicious, now. ‘Did your housekeeper up and quit you or something?’

  He merely chuckled, the sound a friendly, somehow- secure rumbling over the ‘phone. ‘I’d hardly be calling you if that was the case,’ he said softly. ‘The only thing worse than your housekeeping is your cooking.’