by Maggie Hope
‘Let me go, please,’ Cath said through gritted teeth.
‘Not until you hear me out,’ said Jack. ‘I want to apologise for my behaviour that day in the outbuildings.’ She looked up at him in surprise and he smiled down at her, a genuine smile that gave her a melting feeling inside. ‘Though you must admit, you punished me for it enough on the day. I was bruised for weeks – did you know that?’
‘You deserved it.’
No, she was not going to let him get to her, she was not, Cath told herself. He was only after sex, another scalp to his belt, oh yes; she knew what he was like. She hated him; she remembered everything he had said about her and her family, every nasty, disparaging word.
Suddenly she managed to pull herself free of him and turned on her heel and walked towards the circle of dancers.
‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ she said and managed to get out. She walked to the door of the ballroom, hesitating as to what to do next.
‘Why don’t we have a drink and talk things over properly?’ Jack asked her. He startled her as he was immediately behind her, taking hold of her elbow and steering her towards the bar.
‘No, I’m going home,’ she said. She was furious at herself, at her body’s response on seeing him; his touching her. She loved Brian; she would marry him when he came out of the Air Force, she would. But deep down she knew she had not felt like this with Brian, ever.
‘A drink won’t hurt you. Look, I’m sorry for the way I behaved last time, I really am. And the time I pushed you out of the car. I’m ashamed of myself. I was angry and I know none of it was your fault.’
Cath looked at him. He seemed so earnest. Surely he wasn’t pretending? ‘One drink,’ she conceded. She was thirsty in any case, she told herself. ‘Just an orange juice please.’
They sat down at a table in the corner of the bar and Jack signed to the waiter. He ordered the drinks and then turned back to her.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘I’m thinking you might still be angry when you discover that your father and my mother have been together today, probably still are together.’ Cath waited for him to either explode or walk out, but he did neither.
Jack looked across at the bar before replying, watching the waiter draw his pint of beer and then take a small bottle of orange juice from the shelf behind and pour that into a wine glass and bring them over.
‘Well, I’m older now and my mother has been dead for a long time. My father has the right to be with whomever he likes.’ Jack grinned. ‘You look flabbergasted.’
‘Oh, I am, I’m amazed.’
Cath took a sip of her juice, unsure what to make of this turnaround.
‘Come on, Cath, let’s be friends,’ Jack said softly and put his hand on her wrist. ‘Let’s finish our drinks and go back on to the dance floor. They’re playing a quickstep. I love to quickstep, especially with you.’
Strains of the ‘Twelfth Street Rag’ came through as someone opened the door of the ballroom.
Chapter Nineteen
‘Aren’t you going to ask me in for a coffee?’ Jack lifted an eyebrow quizzically, almost as though he expected to be refused.
‘Jack, it’s late, I don’t know,’ Cath replied weakly. He had driven her home to the house in Gilesgate where she had had a room for nearly a year. It was a nice house, double-fronted and three storeys high and in a respectable street.
Cath rented the room from an elderly couple, Pete and Hilda Wearmouth, and at the moment she was the only tenant they had for the students had gone home for the long summer recess. Pete and Hilda were on holiday too, in Devon for a fortnight staying with their daughter and her husband.
‘You sure you’ll be all right on your own?’ Hilda had asked before agreeing to go. ‘Only it’s the grandbairn, you see, we don’t get to see little Peter very often.’
‘Of course I will,’ Cath had replied. ‘In any case, I might be spending some time at my mother’s.’
‘Well? Am I allowed in or not?’ Jack persisted. ‘It’s a fair drive home, and a cup of coffee would be very welcome.’
Cath looked at him and couldn’t help smiling. The moon shone through the window and highlighted his face: he was so good-looking and he smiled so engagingly. She looked at the house with its dark windows and thought about there being no one in and no one to call if things got out of hand and she was about to say no, he couldn’t come in. For a brief moment she remembered that time in the old outhouse.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, of course you can come in.’ They ran up the steps and she opened the door, switched on the light and led the way up to her room. It was only one room but it was fairly large, with a big bay window, an armchair, a double bed, which she couldn’t keep her eyes from, and a partitioned-off alcove in the corner that had been rigged out as a kitchen. The window looked out over part of the city with the cathedral looming large at one end.
‘Nice view,’ he said as he followed her to the window where she was drawing the curtains. She glanced over her shoulder at him and saw he was looking at her, not the view from the window.
‘I’ll make the coffee,’ she said.
‘Later,’ Jack replied and drew her down on to the bed. ‘I’ve been wanting to kiss you all evening.’
‘Jack—’
‘Don’t worry so much,’ Jack murmured into her hair. ‘It will be all right. You’re so beautiful. When I saw you in the County tonight I realised what an idiot I’d been. I promise you I won’t do anything you don’t want me to, I promise.’
All the time he was punctuating his words with tiny kisses, on her eyelids, lips, the nape of her neck, her collarbone and the tops of her breasts.
This time Cath didn’t stop him. She was carried away on a tide of feeling that engulfed them both. His touch on her body was electrifying, irresistible, but she didn’t want to resist anyway. The heat of her own emotions, her response to him, overwhelmed her; she was drowning in it. Carried away with it until she thought she would die until release came and she couldn’t believe the intensity of it.
Jack collapsed on top of her with his head on her shoulder, and she could feel his heart beating very fast in unison with her own.
The ringing of church bells awakened her. For a moment she was disorientated for she had been dreaming she was in the woods behind Eden Hope, on the grassy bank by the small tributary of the Wear. She was sitting with Annie, and they were laughing and throwing pebbles into the water and tiddlers were darting about like bits of quicksilver, shining in the sunlight. She was squinting against the sun shining in her eyes and suddenly Jack was there with Mark.
‘What are you doing here?’ one of them asked, and Annie clung to her for protection. Then the bells rang and it wasn’t Annie’s arm around her neck, it was Jack’s. The sun was in her eyes all right but it was streaming in through the side of the curtains where she hadn’t finished drawing them properly the night before. She turned her head to look at him – he was still asleep, his mouth curved into a half-smile. His fair hair was dishevelled on the pillow and glinting in the sunlight. As she moved he instinctively tightened his hold on her.
Dear God, she thought, what was she doing with him? How could she trust him after what had happened before? He had tried to force her, yes, he had. Looking at him now, she wondered; he had such a pleasant face, relaxed in sleep as it was now. And she loved him. It was an alien thought to her, a new thought, that she felt so strongly about anyone. But she did. And she wasn’t sorry for what had happened, though all the conventions told her she should be. Was she really like her mother? Was she wanton? She didn’t care, she was not sorry; she loved him. Heck, she sounded like Katharine Hepburn in that film, what was it? She couldn’t remember. She wouldn’t do it again, though; this was not the pictures, this was real and she must be sensible. She had to be.
Suddenly his eyes were open and he was looking straight at her. He gazed at her for a few moments then moved his arm to her waist and pulled her even closer so that they were tou
ching along almost the length of their bodies.
‘Good morning, my love,’ he said, and her heart melted even more than it already had.
‘I’ll get up and make some breakfast,’ she said weakly, feeling suddenly shy, which was plainly ridiculous, she told herself.
‘In a minute or two,’ he murmured and kissed her.
It was a couple of hours later that she woke again. There was no sign of Jack; his side of the bed was empty. For a moment she panicked: he had gone, he had fooled her, she wouldn’t see him again, not now she wouldn’t. She felt hot and sticky and as she swung her legs on to the floor she winced, as muscles she hadn’t known she had protested. She took her old robe from a hook behind the door and put it on over her nakedness. She wanted a bath, she was desperate for one but the water would be cold and the old geyser took an age to heat up. Never mind: she would have a cold bath and scrub herself clean.
The bathroom was along the corridor but, as she touched the handle, it opened from the inside and there he was, bathed and shaved and with a towel tied round his middle.
‘I lit the geyser, you don’t mind, do you?’ he asked. ‘I was just coming to wake you. I thought we could go out and have something to eat.’ His words were prosaic but as he spoke he touched her cheek tenderly and his eyes sparkled with something. Affection? Love? She didn’t care.
‘I have food in the landlady’s larder downstairs. I’ll do it,’ she said. ‘Bacon and eggs all right?’
They ate breakfast in the large, old-fashioned kitchen and afterwards he helped her clear away and wash up and they went for a walk along the riverbank in the afternoon sun. As it grew cooler they walked back hand in hand and went to bed again, waking up ravenously hungry at about seven and driving out to a country inn for dinner. Everything seemed magical to Cath; she was intoxicated with the whole weekend. She didn’t come down to earth until they were parked once again outside the house and there was a light showing through the curtains of the sitting room. It was a great disappointment, for she hadn’t been expecting Pete and Hilda back for another week.
‘I won’t come in,’ said Jack and looked up at the lighted window. He touched her chin gently with his forefinger. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow evening. I’ll pick you up from work. The same place, is it? Along Old Elvet?’
‘Yes.’
Cath could hardly speak; she was filled with sadness and an uncertain foreboding. It had been a magical weekend but perhaps that was all it was, a weekend, an episode in his life, and if it was she couldn’t bear it.
Jack smiled and kissed her lips, and she got out of the car and walked up the steps without looking back. She heard the car roar off towards the Al as she put her key in the lock. She popped her head round the sitting-room door. Hilda was knitting something small and white and Pete was reading the Sunday Post: each sitting on either side of the gas fire in comfortable armchairs.
‘Would you like a cup of tea, dear?’ Hilda asked. ‘We’re just going to have one.’ She put her needles together and stuck them into the ball of white, fluffy wool.
‘Not for me, thanks,’ Cath replied. ‘You’re back early, aren’t you?’
‘Well, you know how we are. We like home the best,’ said Hilda. ‘Devon’s all right, and it was nice seeing the family. Little Peter is lovely, but we like to get home.’
‘I’ll just go up then,’ said Cath. ‘Goodnight.’
She went upstairs and stood with her back to her door. When she closed her eyes she could smell Jack’s cologne. She would see him tomorrow after work – he would be waiting for her on the street in Old Elvet. Of course he would, he had said so, hadn’t he?
Still, as she combed her hair and renewed her make-up at five o’clock on Monday afternoon, she still had doubts about him. She was usually last out of the Powers-Samas accounting machine room, for she was supervisor now and liked to make sure everything was in order and papers tidied away before the cleaners came in. Today she was even later than usual. By the time she went down the stairs and opened the front door there were only a few stragglers hurrying along Old Elvet towards the bridge that led into the city and the bus and train stations. There were no cars apart from one heading down from the Licensing Department and turning at the bottom for New Elvet. No cars parked, none at all.
‘Well, I knew it,’ she said aloud. She stood for a few minutes outside the door then turned and walked off towards Elvet Bridge.
‘I thought you were going out tonight,’ said Hilda as Cath came in the door.
‘I got stood up,’ Cath replied and went on up the stairs to her room.
‘Cath’s in a bit of a mood; she has been let down,’ Hilda reported to Pete as she went back into the sitting room. ‘I’ll take her a cup of tea up later when she’s calmed down a bit.’
What a fool she was, Cath thought, as she flung herself down on the bed. What’s more, she had known what he was like; she had had doubts about him all along. It served her right, oh, it did indeed. It was humiliating but it wasn’t the humiliation that hurt most: it was the fact that she loved him and, for a short while, she had thought he loved her and he did not.
Chapter Twenty
‘Henry has turned over the running of the estate to his son,’ said Sadie. ‘He was telling me about it last night. Jack’s home now, you know.’
‘Is he?’ Cath turned to look out of the window. ‘Well, that’s their business, isn’t it?’
‘I was just saying,’ said Sadie, looking slightly hurt. Sadie loved it when Henry made her his confidante. It made her think that she might yet become the next Mrs Vaughan. She had begun trying to adopt a more refined accent but it was hard, very hard.
I’m just like my mother, thought Cath bitterly, with ideas above my station. But not any more. At least I know where I stand with Jack now: nowhere.
‘I’m going up to Shildon to see Annie,’ she said. ‘I’ll get the bus into Auckland and go on from there.’ It was the Saturday following the weekend with Jack, and she had decided against staying in Durham. Aunt Patsy had recently acquired a telephone and she had rung to tell her she was coming to Shildon after seeing her mother.
‘Annie’s not well,’ Patsy had said sharply. ‘I hope you don’t upset her.’
‘Why should I do that?’ Cath had asked. ‘We’re close, Annie and me. What’s wrong with her, anyway?’
‘It’s her nerves,’ said Patsy. ‘The doctor’s put her on tablets again.’
‘Well, tell Annie I’ll see her Saturday afternoon.’
Cath had reported this conversation to her mother and asked her if she wanted to go to Shildon too.
‘Annie is going to have to pull herself together sometime,’ Sadie had answered. ‘I have no patience with her at all. She gets enough sympathy from our Patsy. I don’t hold with pampering her, most folk just have to get on with it. Anyway, I can’t go. I’m expecting Henry.’
She was always expecting Henry, Cath said to herself as she waited in Bishop Auckland marketplace for the number one bus that ran to Shildon and Darlington. The marketplace was thronging, for the market was on, and the queue for the bus stretched between a shoe stall and a fruit and vegetable stall. She was jostled by shoppers and people trying to get past to the other bus stands and there was a great bustle and noise from the stallholders shouting their wares to that of the buses revving up to go. So at first she didn’t hear Mark addressing her from behind.
‘Hello, Cath,’ he said again. ‘How are you?’
She turned in surprise then smiled. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked him. ‘I haven’t see you in the town lately.’ She thought of the last time she had seen him and how nice he had been to her as they walked by the Wear in Durham.
‘I was just visiting a friend,’ he replied, interrupting her thoughts. ‘Where are you off to?’
‘Shildon. I’m visiting my sister.’
‘No boyfriend today?’
‘He’s in the Air Force doing his National Service. But he’s not my boyfriend.’
‘I don’t think so. Thanks anyway.’
The bus had come in and the queue was moving forward. There was something about Mark; he was attractive to her, but she wasn’t going to go out with him or anyone else, not for a long time, if ever. He wouldn’t want her anyway if he knew what had happened with Jack. No one would want her.
‘Oh, come on. Can’t we be friends? Nothing else, I promise you.’
Mark smiled again, lifting one eyebrow. She had reached the door of the bus. She was about to refuse once more then thought again. Why not? She had nothing against Mark, and why should she let Jack Vaughan spoil her life?
‘Righto,’ she said. ‘I’ll meet you in Rossi’s coffee shop at seven.’
She climbed on to the bus and took a seat on the road side of the vehicle.
So she didn’t see him as he walked back to his car, which was parked by Barclays Bank behind the market stalls. As he went he took an envelope out of his pocket and looked at it before putting it back. ‘Sorry Jack,’ he murmured as he got into the car. ‘All’s fair in love and war and all that.’
How inconsistent she was, thought Cath, as she gazed out of the window at the shops as the bus moved slowly up Newgate Street to Cockton Hill. Why couldn’t she make a decision and stick to it? Thoughts of Jack and his lovemaking clouded her thoughts. But she would get over him, yes, she would. She wouldn’t be such a stupid fool as to be taken in by him again. Meanwhile, she had Annie to think about. She got off the bus at the Hippodrome in Shildon and walked to the house.
