by Lucy Gordon
“Philip, I take it, is your ex-boyfriend.”
“My ex-boyfriend?”
“Of course he is, after the way he abandoned you tonight. You can’t go on seeing him.”
He spoke peremptorily and was rather annoyed when she laughed. But after a moment he laughed, too.
She made sandwiches, and later he decided it had been guilt that made him invite her to dinner. She was so poor and feeding him must have depleted her food stock. But the truth was that he wanted to see her again. She was fresh and original, and she could make him laugh, especially when she was innocently tactless, which was often.
“Oh, heavens, there’s another of my clangers,” she would say, covering her mouth and looking like a guilty schoolgirl.
He would grin and swear that he enjoyed her clangers. It was true enough, but the thought flashed through his mind that it was lucky they were alone. It wouldn’t do to have her dropping bricks over the feet of his clients.
He began calling her, taking her out, and at last they became lovers.
Strange that he should use the word lovers when he never used it of himself and the woman he now planned to marry. He was welcome in Marguerite’s bed whenever he wanted. His expensive gifts had ensured that. She was a good sexual partner who knew how to excite a man. Yet he’d never thought of her as a lover.
Sarah Conroy had been his lover because she loved him. He knew it from the warmth and generosity of her passion. He’d never said he loved her, either to himself or to her. But she charmed him, and he could talk to her. Perhaps it didn’t suit him to look more closely at his own feelings.
Mostly their nights were spent at his apartment, but one evening she cried off their date, pleading a heavy cold.
“I’ll come and see you,” he said at once.
“No, no, you mustn’t. Remember how easily you catch cold.”
“How did you know that?” he demanded, displeased.
“You told me the first evening. You said you were always the first to catch any cold that was going around.”
He wondered what had possessed him to reveal his one weakness. He’d always kept it a closely guarded secret, because in the jungle you didn’t dare reveal the slightest chink in your defenses. But there was a warmth and sympathy about her that lured a man to talk.
He visited her that night, and she greeted him from behind a large handkerchief. “Go away, I’m full of germs,” she protested in a muffled voice.
He settled her on the sofa and made her a supper of tea and poached eggs. Then he tidied up with a deftness that surprised her.
“My mother was a tidy woman, and she had a heavy hand,” he explained. “I soon learned to do as I was told.”
She laughed and had a coughing fit.
“Come out from behind that hanky,” he said.
“I’ve got a red nose,” she wailed.
“Let me see.”
“No, I look awful.”
He’d prevailed at last. Her nose was very red, and her eyes looked heavy. But it didn’t cross his mind that she was unattractive. She was his delightful Sarah, especially when, a moment later, she dropped one of her clangers.
“I can’t imagine you with a mother,” she said serenely, then clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oh, no, I didn’t mean that exactly—”
“Yes, you did.” He grinned. “An ogre, generated from inside a machine. Is that me?”
“Oh, you know what I mean.”
He’d told her about his boyhood with the feckless father who was always on the verge of making his fortune, although seldom in work.
“I grew sick of listening to his endless daydreaming while my mother scrimped and saved because he’d spent what little money we had on one mad scheme after another. I was determined to get out and take Greg with me. I’m only sorry my mother didn’t live long enough for me to give her some comfort.”
Her own childhood had been happier. She’d grown up in a small country village with her mother and her great-uncle.
“Mom died four years ago. Haven is such a sleepy little place. I wanted to find out if the city streets really were paved with gold.”
He hardly heard her words. He was watching her, enjoying the comfortable glow that was pervading him. He hadn’t felt like this since he was a boy, sitting at the kitchen table doing his homework, hearing his mother’s movements in the background, knowing that the world was a good place because she was there.
He hadn’t stayed long. He’d seen her safely to bed and departed, smiling. He’d paid for that visit with one of the worst colds he’d ever had, and yet the evening stood out in his mind as an oasis of warmth and contentment.
When had he first sensed something wrong? Perhaps it was when she refused to accept the fur stole he’d bought her. She hated the whole idea of fur, and she wouldn’t budge. Until then he’d known only her gentle side, but she had displayed a stubbornness that surprised and displeased him.
But the real trouble had started the night he’d told her about the little company he’d managed to close down by getting control of its debts. The owner had fought to the last ditch but had finally admitted defeat. It was another victory for Justin Hallwood, but Sarah had only said, “It must be dreadful to lose everything like that!”
Her words had jarred him. This wasn’t how she was supposed to respond to the tale of his triumph. “The place was a millstone around the man’s neck,” he said impatiently. “He ought to be glad to be rid of it. I’ve made him a generous offer.”
“An offer he couldn’t refuse,” she replied wryly.
His face tightened. “That was quite unnecessary.”
“It was only a little joke, Justin.”
“In very poor taste.”
“You’re right. It isn’t funny, at all. It’s terribly sad for that poor man, after he’d worked all those years—”
“Sarah, you’re looking at this the wrong way. In business you need a grand vision, or you’ll always be stumbling around over minor details.”
“And that’s all the little people are?” she asked, looking at him strangely. “Minor details that don’t matter?”
“Of course they matter,” he said impatiently. “I’m not a monster. I don’t throw them out to starve. I told you I made a generous offer.”
“But you took away that man’s pride and joy. Maybe you starved his heart.”
He found this remark so fantastic that he could only stare. But after a moment’s intense annoyance he forgave her. After all, what could she know?
“The point is,” he said, “that I have a vision for my firm. I started it from nothing. There were plenty of people who tried to put me out of business with some very dirty tricks. I didn’t complain. I just fought back. Now it’s on course to dominate the market in this country, and I won’t stop until it dominates the world market.”
“Dominates the world,” she mused thoughtfully. “Justin, how many small people will you have to crush to achieve that?”
He sighed and gave up trying to explain what she couldn’t understand. “In the end, the world boils down to the small people and the big people,” he declared bluntly. “I’ve tried being both, and I know which kind I want to be.”
“But—”
“Another coffee?” he asked smoothly, bored with this kind of talk. He didn’t take her out so she could criticise him.
Later that night he’d made love to her skillfully, caressing her in the ways he knew she loved and reveling in the passionate response of her eager body. But again he felt something wrong, and at last he realized that her eyes were closed. Usually she made love looking at him, but now she was shutting him out.
They’d stayed together for a little longer, trying to pretend that all was well. But he never again spoke to her of his work, and it irked him to recognize that he flinched before her judgment. He began to be angry with her.
There was no quarrel, but one night he dropped her at her door and said, “I’ll be busy for a while. I’ll call you in a week
or so.”
“All right,” she said softly. “Goodbye, Justin.”
She smiled at him, and it was the gallant smile he’d seen the first night. She knew she was being brushed off. Perhaps she even knew it was because her honesty unnerved him. But she was without selfpity, accepting her happiness as a gift and refusing to complain when it was over. There was a pain in the area of his heart, but he ignored it.
Several times over the next three weeks he’d almost called her, but what would have been the point? They wouldn’t have suited each other long-term. He needed a wife who would be a part of his professional world, as Sarah never could. It was better this way.
But then she’d turned up at his apartment one evening and told him she was expecting a child. And he’d said the first thing that came into his head. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”
When he saw her radiant smile he realized that she’d misunderstood. “I mean I’ll find you the best clinic there is. It’s a simple operation these days, and of course I’ll pay for everything…” As her smile died he found he couldn’t go on. A moment before she’d been glorified, treasuring the most wonderful gift in the world. Now her face showed only disbelieving horror.
“Kill our baby,” she whispered. “That’s what you mean, don’t you?”
Dismay had made him speak roughly. “It’s not exactly a baby yet—”
“It is to me,” she burst out fiercely. “It’s a living child, my child! Yours, too, if you’d wanted it. But it’s nothing to you, is it? Just an inconvenience to be disposed of.”
He turned away from the accusation in her eyes, but she came after him. “Justin, I didn’t come here to trap you. I came because you had the right to know you’re going to be a father. I’m not asking you to marry me. I don’t even want to marry you if you don’t love me. But don’t ask me to kill your child.”
She’d made it easy for him. He could have squared his conscience with a financial settlement. But the devil seemed to have gotten into him, and it maddened him that she wouldn’t see things his way.
“For heaven’s sake!” he shouted. “Stop using emotive words. It’s not a child or a baby. Just a fetus. It’s about the size of a pinhead, and easy to get rid of.”
“I’m not going to get rid of my baby,” she said. “I’ve done what I had to do in coming here, but it’s over. You needn’t think about us anymore.”
“Do be sensible,” he begged irritably. “I told you I’d take care of everything, and I will. I don’t shirk my responsibilities.”
“Oh, but you do, Justin. That’s exactly what you’re doing. You’ve created life, but you don’t want to be responsible for it. And I think maybe I’m glad. Because now I’m finished with you. I loved you. I know you can be hard and unkind, but I thought there was a good man underneath. But I was wrong. I don’t want you for the father of my child. You aren’t fit to be a father.”
“That’s enough!” he roared, turning away from her and slamming his hand down on a table. He stayed like that for a full minute, calming himself, hoping she wouldn’t goad him further. He glanced up and saw her face reflected in the mirror. She was distraught, tears pouring down her cheeks. He closed his eyes against the sight. He didn’t know what had happened to him. He hated himself but couldn’t stop. When he felt he was in control again he turned with kinder words on his lips.
She was gone.
Justin rushed to the door and looked into the corridor. It was empty. There was no sign of her. He leaped into an elevator, cursing with impatience as it’ descended to the first floor. Someone told him that a young woman had left a moment ago and vanished into the crowd.
He tried to contact her at her little flat, at her place of work, but she’d left them both that same day. He wrote to her, hoping she’d arranged for her mail to be redirected, but his letters came back. He hired a firm of private investigators, but they failed, partly because Justin could give them nothing to go on. He thought Sarah had mentioned a place she’d once lived, but the name had gone out of his head.
In desperation he consulted Philip, but Philip, knowing only that his ex had taken up with the boss, decided that safety lay in ignorance. “I didn’t really know her all that well,” he insisted.
“Didn’t she ever tell you where she lived before she came to London?” Justin demanded.
“Somewhere in the country?” Philip hazarded. “Look, I hardly knew her.” He wouldn’t budge from this.
Sarah had vanished into thin air, leaving behind only her last terrible words. “I don’t want you for the father of my child. You aren’t fit to be a father.”
“We’ll have to come out here for a while,” Sarah said to her son, smiling into his big round eyes. “Uncle Nick wants to finish the icing on your cake. This is a big day for you, your very first birthday. How about that?”
The baby chuckled, not because he understood but because he chuckled at everything. Life was a constant delight to him. His mother hugged him against her, overwhelmed with love for this merry scrap who felt so warm and sweet in her arms.
“We’re going to have a party,” she went on, “with presents and balloons, and all your friends. Why don’t we see if we can find some wildflowers to put around the house?”
She climbed the gentle hill that rose behind the village of Haven. The first signs of spring were just appearing. Buds adorned the trees, and the landscape was yellow with daffodils.
Sarah sat on the ground with Nicky between her knees and drank in the beauty. It had been a hard winter, and the March winds still blew, but the sun was out. Down below she could see the houses, and there was the main street along which she’d hurried on that desperate night, not knowing if Uncle Nick would take her in. He belonged to the old school, which made harsh judgments of unmarried mothers.
There was Mottson’s General Store, the little shop that had been his life for forty years. She could just make out the side door where she’d knocked. He’d opened it at once, drawing her in out of the rain and hugging her.
The old man had been sad about her pregnancy but not censorious. He’d asked about the father but respected her refusal to speak of him. And he’d made it clear that this was her home. The most critical thing he’d said was, “You should never have left the country. You don’t belong in the city any more than I do. Bad things happen there.”
She’d nodded, but in her heart she knew she could never regret those few blazing weeks of joy. She’d loved Justin. He hadn’t loved her, and in the end he’d broken her heart. But the beauty had been fierce and wonderful while it lasted, and it had left her with a miracle.
At first glance Nicky didn’t look like his father. But his eyes were the same startling blue, and his pudgy, infant hands already showed signs of the long fingers he’d inherited from Justin. Sarah splayed one of the little hands lovingly in hers. She’d thought she could never be happy again, but at this moment, sitting on the quiet hillside, listening to the birdsong, she knew that she was blessed. It was he who’d lost everything.
She and Nicky returned home, their hands filled with violets and buttercups. Uncle Nick had finished the icing on the cake, and even if it was a little wonky, it was still a masterpiece. In the center stood one large candle.
There were eight guests, aged from one to three, accompanied by mothers, aunts or grandparents. There were balloons and paper hats, and a box of crackers Uncle Nick had kept from Christmas. Somebody’s grandfather did conjuring tricks and got them all wrong, but nobody minded. Sarah opened presents and showed them to her little son, who gave his fat chuckle to every one and happily tore up the wrapping paper.
There were jellies and ice creams for tea. Then Sarah lit the candle and showed Nicky how to blow. He puffed up his cheeks, but the flame only wavered. It took a huge gust from everyone to put it out, while Nicky waved his arms and crowed approval. A final rendering of “Happy Birthday” and the party was over.
Just before she put Nicky to bed Sarah held him up to the window. �
��Look,” she said eagerly, “there’s a shooting star. Let’s each make a wish. Anything you like.” Nicky gurgled gleefully and reached out his hands. “I know,” she said tenderly. “You want the whole of life, and you’ll have everything I can give you, my darling—except one thing.”
Now she knew what her own wish would be. It wasn’t for Nicky, who already had so much. It was for the man who had nothing in the midst of riches.
“I want a miracle,” she whispered, “so that he can understand, before it’s too late for him.”
As always, Marguerite did Justin credit. The black, glittering dress clung to her voluptuous figure. The neck was so low as to be barely decent, showing off the pearly whiteness of her shoulders and bosom. With her golden hair piled on her head she looked what she was, a hard, glossy woman who’d groomed herself to be the wife of a rich man. There was applause as she walked in on his arm.
The guests were arranged around small tables, with a long table at one end, where Justin and Marguerite would sit with the more notable guests. He led her to the spot, while the band played and everyone sang “Happy Birthday” and she blew kisses. An onlooker might have thought her overcome with surprise, although she’d overseen the arrangements herself, with a steely eye for detail. Justin had attended dinner parties in her home and knew that she was a superb hostess, skilled in cordon bleu cookery and abreast of the latest topics of conversation. She would be an excellent wife for a man like him.
“Darling,” Marguerite cooed, “you shouldn’t have done all this for me.”
“You deserve only the best,” he said gallantly.
As ill luck would have it, they were placed near the spot he’d seen Sarah standing two years ago. Justin cursed Greg and his unruly tongue. The last person he wanted to think of tonight was Sarah, with all the associations of failure and guilt she brought with her.
He’d worked hard at banishing those thoughts. He’d told himself how unreasonable she was to have vanished without giving him a chance to explain. But there was a shadow on his heart that wouldn’t go away. She’d been worth ten of the glamorous dolls he normally escorted. He knew that. He’d known it on the day he defiantly decided to marry a woman who was the very opposite of Sarah.
