The Treacherous Heart

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Anne and Michael watched him go. Anne held herself rigid against the emotions inside her, and waited in apprehension for Michael to break the silence. If he said something cruel or mocking, it would tear her. But after a moment he moved to her and touched her hand lightly and said in a very gentle voice,

  ‘Poor bloke. He really loved you.’

  Anne let him take her hand for the comfort. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you chose me instead of him. That must have been a blow to his pride.’

  ‘Don’t let’s talk about it,’ Anne said. ‘Let’s go inside and dance. I want to forget it.’

  ‘As you like,’ Michael said, and, slender and dark and elegant, without Joe’s good looks as Joe was without his charm, he escorted her back into the ballroom through the same avenue of curious stares that Joe had had to negotiate a few moments before.

  ‘Poor bloke,’ Michael murmured again. ‘At least I got the girl.’

  Yes, she thought, you got the girl: but how absolutely she was his captive she was only just beginning to realise. She wondered if he knew the depth of her commitment. So much she loved him, that she would forgive him even the dark-haired woman – even that dark secret.

  For the other woman was fact – she knew as she knew the sun would rise tomorrow that Joe would not lie about that to her. He had been seeing another woman. Perhaps it was an innocent relationship. Perhaps he had a good reason for keeping it a secret from her. Perhaps he was not even lying about not meeting her in the restaurant, and Wendy was mistaken after all.

  But whatever the truth was, Anne knew that she had to accept the situation, she had to trust him. Belief comes from the inside, he had said: and inside her, her living self knew that he was for her. Wordlessly, senselessly, her heart believed in him. He had woken the sleeping tiger, and she knew that if he wanted her, she would go with him to the ends of the earth, for that was the adventure she had waited for all her life.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘The fight I never had seems to have established me as a Winton character,’ Michael said, breaking off a grass stem and putting it in his mouth. They were sitting on top of a cliff overlooking the sea. There was no one else in sight, not even a building or a boat, and they could see for twenty miles around.

  ‘Don’t suck that,’ she warned him. ‘You’ll get enteritis.’

  ‘Too late,’ he said, taking the end out and staring at it. ‘I’ve already sucked it. Besides, if I’m going to become a local character, I’ll have to start chewing straws.’

  ‘I’ll ignore the intended slight on my fellow yokels,’ Anne said, lying back on the short mossy turf and squinting up at him. ‘Anyway, what do you mean about the fight?’

  ‘Only that people keep coming up to me and telling me bits of local news. I’m sure they wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t stood up to your ex-boyfriend in a public place.’

  ‘Don’t mock,’ Anne said, but without heat. ‘What have they told you then. And who’s they, anyway?’

  ‘I’ve been told,’ he said solemnly, rolling over on one elbow and gazing down at Anne from directly above, ‘that the young lady vet from Upwood has got engaged. And that she’s not wasting any time – she’s put the banns up, too.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’ she exclaimed. Michael bent down to kiss her and she pushed him away, eager for news. ‘No, don’t, tell me properly about this.’

  ‘What ever happened to romance?’ he sighed. ‘Am I always to play second fiddle to a pig-man?’

  ‘You mean it’s Joe? Tell me!’

  ‘Yes, she’s getting married to your Joe. Are you happy about that?’ he asked her curiously.

  ‘Not my Joe any more,’ she said automatically. ‘Yes, of course I’m happy about it. I’m sure they’ll be very happy together. Reading Marx and raising pigs.’

  ‘That comes very close to being catty,’ Michael warned her.

  ‘It wasn’t meant to be. He’s buying that piece of land, you know, to start up on his own.’

  Michael nodded. ‘I got told that too. But of course you knew it first.’

  ‘Could hardly help it seeing we’re his family solicitor. Hers too, now. But I’d never have made a farmer’s wife. I should have realised that long ago. Continually battling with the rising price of feed and the falling price of meat. The diseases and the vet’s bills – though I suppose he won’t have any of those if he’s marrying one – and the sows that die in farrow and the piglets that get overlaid. And the work, day after day after day. No leisure time for a farmer, or his wife. No going away for a fortnight in Benidorm. Just the farm, for ever.’

  She shuddered. He laughed at her.

  ‘What a scene of horror! And to think you only just escaped it!’

  ‘Only just,’ she agreed gravely, looking up at his dear, lopsided face and his far-seeing eyes. ‘Saved from a fate worse than death.’

  ‘And what do you intend to do with your life, now you’ve been reprieved?’

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  She could hardly say, on you. Why didn’t the world arrange itself so that a woman could propose as well as a man, instead of remaining in this state of anticipation week after week?

  ‘On lots of things. My father, for instance. I’d like to see him settled in that little cottage he’s fallen in love with, but for him to do that, I’d have to leave home.’

  ‘That sounds dramatic. But it’s not a big step, you know. Lots of people leave home every day and survive the experience.’

  ‘It’s a big step the first time you do it. And to set off for an unknown destination alone—’

  ‘Oh, you’re thinking of going alone, are you?’

  ‘Well, who do you think I should go with?’

  ‘Whom.’

  ‘All right, then, whom?’

  ‘It depends where you’re thinking of going,’ Michael countered, and seeing her frustrated expression he laughed again and rolled over onto his back to look at the sea again. ‘Seriously, though, I’ve been wondering if you’d like a change of scene.’

  Anne’s heart was beating a little faster, but she concealed it, and spoke calmly.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, you’ve been working for that same firm for such a long time. How about a new job? How about coming to work for me in the new showroom?’

  ‘As what?’ Her calm voice was not an act now.

  ‘Receptionist and saleswoman. There’s nothing men like better when they’re buying a car than to have it shown off to them by a pretty girl. And the fact that you’re well known here would add to the authenticity of the bargain. They’d trust a car you showed them.’

  ‘What about the female customers?’

  ‘Well, I’d deal with them, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Anne said, a small smile tugging the corners of her lips. ‘But it wouldn’t solve Dad’s problem.’

  ‘I’d thought of that, too. You could have the flat above the garage. It’s small – hardly more than a bedsitter really – but it would be a start towards independence.’

  ‘And where would you be living, if I had the flat above the garage?’

  ‘The flat above the showroom of course,’ Michael said. Anne smiled faintly at him, and then shook her head.

  ‘It wouldn’t do.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t it?’ he asked, although he half knew what she was going to say.

  ‘Because the two flats share the same staircase. People would talk.’

  ‘You mean people would think I was visiting you at night,’ he said flatly. She nodded. ‘But my dear girl, I could visit you at night wherever you were living.’

  ‘People don’t see it that way. Besides—’ she hesitated. ‘It would look – so particular. It would look as though we were going to get married.’

  ‘What do you care what people think?’ he asked her, with a peculiarly wry expression.

  ‘I do care,’ she insisted.

  ‘For other people’s opinion of you? Does it matt
er?’

  ‘Yes, it does,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Not strangers, it isn’t their business. But when you live in a small place like Winton, you can’t do anything without it getting back to people you know and love – people like Dad, and the doctor, and people you care about and who care about you. And it hurts them, because they care about you.’

  ‘No man is an island?’ Michael suggested.

  ‘Yes, if you like,’ Anne said. ‘At any rate, nothing you do affects only yourself. If you think that, you’re selfish and blind.’ Then, realising she had been laying down the law rather firmly, she added lamely, ‘At least that’s what I think.’

  ‘So the upshot is,’ Michael said, not looking at her, ‘that you wouldn’t live in the flat above the garage unless we were going to be married?’

  ‘Not until after you’ve gone,’ she said, trying to bring a touch of lightness into the conversation.

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Well, you won’t be staying in Winton for ever, will you? You’ll be moving on after a year or two, won’t you?’

  ‘Will I?’

  ‘I don’t know. Don’t keep answering my questions with questions. I thought you were the roving type, who never settles down.’

  ‘I always intended to settle down eventually, when I found the right place to be and the right person to be with,’ he said. He picked another grass blade and put it to his mouth, and then remembered, and with a sideways glance at her threw it down again. ‘I always wanted to think I’d have a home eventually. It’s a sad thing to be rootless.’

  ‘Well, if you want to settle in a small town, you’d better put ideas like living in the same house as a girl out of your head.’

  ‘Unless I marry her?’

  ‘Unless you marry her.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t live in the same house with me unless we were married?’

  ‘I’ve said so.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t take the job and the flat I’ve offered you unless I married you?’

  ‘You’re getting there, chum.’

  ‘And that’s the only reason you’d marry me?’

  ‘Wait a minute, who’s talking about marriage?’

  ‘I thought we were.’

  ‘Not as far as I remember. You offered me a job, that’s all I remember being offered.’

  Michael looked at her sideways again, and then grinned ruefully. ‘I lost my nerve at the last minute,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t believe you!’

  ‘I did. I was going to ask you, and then I lost my nerve. I kept hoping you’d ask me, and save me the trouble.’

  ‘How could I ask you?’ Anne said astonished. ‘Really!’

  ‘Oh, I suppose not. It’s very hard you know, having to say these things.’

  ‘What things? And how would you know it’s hard? Have you tried before?’

  Michael jumped up and went onto his knees beside her, taking both her hands and putting on a moonstruck face which did not conceal the genuine emotion in his eyes.

  ‘Darling Anne, will you marry me?’ She did not answer at once, and he went on, ‘I have to warn you that I might not be all I’ve been cracked up to be. I might settle down and become an ordinary unexceptional husband with a mortgage, and stay in the same town for years on end. Could you bear that?’

  ‘I wanted excitement, and adventure,’ Anne said.

  ‘I might contrive to provide you with a bit of the first, though adventure makes its own rules. Unless you can tell yourself that all of life is an adventure. That always seemed to me a very handy philosophy for the nine-to-fiver with a mortgage and a pram to push.’

  ‘I should think it might be an adventure marrying someone I knew absolutely nothing about,’ she said. ‘Nothing but his name – and no proof even that it is his name.’

  ‘Do you think I’d make up something like Frederick?’ he protested.

  ‘For an alias it is a bit unimaginative,’ she agreed.

  ‘Then you’ll do it? You’ll marry me?’

  ‘How could I refuse when you ask me so nicely?’ He clutched her hands, grinning like an idiot, and then kissed them fervently.

  ‘Good girl!’ he said laughing. ‘We’ll have such fun! Everything we do will be fun!’

  ‘Even paying bills?’

  ‘Who’s going to pay bills? We’ve got a car. When there get to be too many of them, we just drive away to another town.’

  ‘For goodness sake! Don’t say anything like that in front of Dad. He’d have fourteen fits. He might just believe you.’

  ‘Who said I was kidding?’ he said with a straight face.

  I have to believe you’re not, she said, but only to herself. She knew nothing about him, nothing at all. It was possibly a grave mistake she was making. But she’d have made as bad a mistake marrying Joe, whom she knew inside out. It might not be everyone’s way, but it was hers, and she had to live by her own nature.

  ‘We’d better go back and tell Dad,’ she said. ‘He’ll be able to have his cottage, and keep rabbits after all. But we’ll stay in Winton for a month or two, won’t we? To let him get used to the idea. He’d worry so if we went away altogether, just at first.’

  ‘Yes, we’ll stay, until he stops thinking of me as a stranger,’ Michael said, taking her hand to help her up. She stood up in one movement, and was wrapped around by his loving arms and kissed for her effort.

  ‘I wouldn’t promise that, if I were you,’ she said, ‘or I’ll never get to see the world.’