The Road to Forever

by Jeneth Murrey

  'First aid box in the bathroom,' she said curtly. 'It should all be in there, I've never opened it since I bought it,' and she leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. Her ankle was hurting like mad, her head was aching and she felt sick. She wanted Owen to go, he brought back all the memories she'd buried—all the things she didn't want to remember—the things which hurt so much more than her ankle.

  But he wouldn't go, she knew that, not until he'd got what he came for. Owen had always been the same, he had an idea and plugged away at it until it had stopped being an idea and become a fact—an accomplished thing. He called her pig-headed, but compared with him, she was nothing!

  He came back to her with the plastic bucket she used to mop the kitchenette floor, setting it down at her feet and putting the bandage beside it. 'Stocking or tights?' he enquired.

  'Tights,' she muttered, leaning over to dip a finger in the bucket of water. It was icy cold and she shivered.

  'Get 'em off, I can't bandage on top of these,' and she hopped on one foot while she wriggled them down over her hips. Owen seemed to take a fiendish delight in plunging her foot into the ice-cold water and holding it here until it was nearly numb.

  'No aspirin,' he was cheerful about it. 'But it's better if you can manage without. Wipe it dry,' and he handed her the towel which he'd brought draped over his shoulder while he opened the packet of bandage. 'Comfortable now?' He stood back to admire his handiwork and then scooped her up to carry her to the table. Lallie had to admit that the strapping looked very neat and professional, but it was much too tight. Beneath it, her ankle throbbed and she felt sick with the pain as she was seated at the table, knowing she wouldn't be able to eat.

  'What use shall I be?' she demanded sulkily. 'I can't walk.'

  He grinned at her cheerfully. 'Stop feeling sorry for yourself, cariad. It's only a minor sprain, in a couple of days you'll not notice it. What's the matter, can't you eat?' as she stared miserably at her plate.

  'No, I don't want anything,' her eyes slid to the divan. 'Could I lie down until you're finished? I've just remembered, there's some paracetamol in my bag, I could have a couple of those with another cup of tea and perhaps I'd sleep for a bit and maybe feel better.'

  'Good idea.' Owen rooted in her bag himself for the tablets and brought them to her with a fresh, cup. 'Drink up and I'll carry you to the couch.'

  When she woke, the curtains were drawn and the room was in darkness, lit only by the glow of the gas fire. She stirred drowsily and became aware that her quarters were more cramped than usual. There was another big body lying beside her on the divan and a heavy arm about her waist. She struggled up, wincing as her foot moved and she pushed at Owen's wide chest. 'What in hell do you think you're doing?' It came out as a savagely indignant whisper, she didn't shout because some of the walls of the flat were no more than paper-thin partitions.

  Owen opened his eyes. There was no brief period when he had to orientate himself, remember where he was—his eyes opened, he was awake and glaring at her.

  'I'm catching up on some sleep I shall miss,' he growled. 'I started out just after seven this morning, I've driven down here and in an hour or so I have to drive back. That'll be over five hundred miles in one day. Do you grudge me a corner of your couch? And don't look so offended, I was too tired to make a pass at you, and if I had, what are you complaining about? This won't be the first time you've been to bed with a man.'

  Lallie deliberately shut the words from her mind—ignoring them as though they'd never been said. Instead she concentrated on her ankle as it joggled about. 'How's Dwynwen?' she asked in a chill little voice. 'She is going to get better, isn't she?'

  'You're actually interested?' He sat on the side of the divan, rubbing his face gently with his hand as though he would rub the tiredness away. 'I've been thinking you'd grown too callous to care. It was touch and go for a while—the first couple of days were dicey, but she's over the worst. Now, shift yourself, little one, we've wasted enough time. If I carry you over to that cupboard, do you think you could throw a few things in a case?' As he was speaking, he rose to his feet and lifted her, jogging her foot even more so that she squealed.

  'It is broken,' she gasped. 'Never mind about taking me back with you, take me to a hospital!'

  'If you don't stop making so much fuss about a trifling sprain, I'll take you to a knacker's yard,' he threatened. Then, as he saw the extent of the swelling, 'I wish we'd had a wider bandage, that one's too small, too narrow to do the job properly.'

  'You mean you don't carry these necessities with you?' She said sarcastically, muttering the words into his shoulder as he carried her across the room. 'How remiss of you, Owen! You never know when you might need these little things, you might meet a horse with a splint or something, you should be prepared.'

  'Shut up!' he warned her, 'or I'll slap your backside, you aggravating little madam.' He dumped her in a chair and reached down a small suitcase. 'Here, put some clothes in that while I make us another cup of tea.'

  Soothed by the tea and another paracetamol, Lallie found herself installed in Owen's beloved old Bentley, its age apparent only in its flowing lines. She watched him turn on his famous smile for her landlady, saw them talking under the street lamp—saw the woman's look of pleasure and gratification, and she ground her small white teeth. Another victim of the 'Owen Tudor' charm! One lopsided smile and seventy-five per cent of the female population swooned at his feet. She had had watched it happen ever since she could remember, even her own mother had fallen for it, to be extra kind and nice to him.

  At about the age of fifteen, Lallie had decided to be one of the unswooning twenty-five per cent, and she had kept that promise which she had made to herself. She had never swooned, smile or no. Instead she had doled out large dollops of bitter sarcasm—treated him to caustic and biting comments and had driven him up the wall with an insolent disobedience— which in her opinion was just where he belonged— on top of a wall like any other randy tomcat!

  She sank back into the soft leather upholstery as the car started away from the kerb, and then, because she was curious, 'Why couldn't Dorcas have come?'

  'Baby on the way,' he said tersely, 'and a bit of difficulty with it. She's not built right for childbearing, too narrow in the pelvis. The doctors and specialists in Cardiff think she'll need a Caesarian, they're keeping a pretty watchful eye on her.'

  'But why me? Why the black sheep? It's not as though you're short of real relations, you've got hundreds, the whole area's snithing with them!'

  'Because Dwynwen asked for you and you owe her, you ungrateful brat. That's why—and now stop talking while I find my way out of London and on to the M1.'

  Lallie closed her eyes and pretended to sleep while her mind went back to when she was fifteen. That had been when things started going downhill as regarded family relationships. Her mother and her stepfather were dead, Jonty just wasn't old enough at nineteen to have the responsibility of the farm, so Owen had given up the veterinary post he'd just obtained in South Wales and had come home to run Bryn Celyn. He'd not confined his energies to the farm with the milking herd, the beef cattle and the sheep. He'd taken on a bit of veterinary work as well and he'd decided that his immediate family needed a bit of discipline. He'd taken one look at Lallie, heard just one of her tempestuous outbursts and had put his foot down, hard!

  She was the first to admit that she'd been a bit spoiled, she was clever and quicker than either Jonty or Dorcas and she was always up to her neck in trouble, but that had been no reason, to her way of thinking, for Owen to take an immediate dislike to her, but he did and he showed it. She couldn't understand it, she had never disliked him, in fact she had been rather proud of him, but if he wanted it that way, that was the way he should have it, and the old house had become a battlefield where two generals had conducted a series of tactical exercises without troops, trying to get the better of each other. There hadn't been any blood or corpses on the battleground, Jonty, Dorcas and Dwyn
wen had never taken sides—it had been single combat.

  When she had brought home poor school reports in the past, Daddy Tudor had never been cross, he didn't think very much of schooling. He admitted frankly that he'd never had very much himself and had done quite well without it, and he'd never told her mother either! Owen wasn't so sanguine. Lallie had a brain, therefore she should use it, not waste it, so there were no more carefree evenings when she ran and played with Jonty and the dogs or watched panel games on T.V. Instead, she had been forced to sit at the kitchen table, under Owen's eye, scribbling away like mad and missing all the fun. When she had presented him with only five 'O' levels, he had snorted down his masterful nose, saying it wasn't good enough.

  'Why?' she had demanded, facing him across the desk in his office, the room he used for his clerical work. 'It's more than Jonty or Dorcas passed. Jonty only had three and Dorcas didn't even try, so why make a fuss about my five?'

  'Because you're intelligent,' he had rasped at her. 'Jonty worked hard for those three, but you've simply idled through, you could have had eight if you'd put your mind to it. You've got two more years in school and I want two "A" level passes from you, good ones, and then we'll see about university.'

  'I don't want…' but he had stopped her.

  'I don't care what you want, you'll work!'

  And she had beaten him on that as well. Only one 'A' level, and when the results had come out, she had glared at him triumphantly and gone off to a secretarial college, full of victory and self-satisfaction. At nineteen, she had gone to London to a job with a small firm run by a lady from Whitechapel. She had typed manuscripts, plays, theses, anything in fact which needed typing. The other four girls in the office had been nice to work with, the work was varied, it wasn't monotonous and she had been happy for a year.

  Then, she had been foolish, that was the word for it. She hadn't done anything wrong, she had simply been young and too naive for words—she skipped over this part quickly, it was painful, and so had been the follow-up.

  Owen had come up to Town to forcibly remove her from the flat which she was sharing with two other girls, and he'd put her in lodgings with what he'd called 'people he could trust'. Gorgons, both of them! He'd also found her another job. She had stayed in both lodgings and job for a year, miserable with the monotony and the supervision, and she'd saved like mad until she had enough money to leave—to find her little flat and the work in the insurance office in Potters Bar.

  Owen hadn't been either kind or understanding when her bit of trouble had happened. He'd been hard, angry and contemptuous, he hadn't even bothered to listen to her stumbling explanation—her little 'affair', as he called it, had been given a lot of publicity and he had believed the newspapers. She was no longer welcome at Bryn Celyn, although he graciously gave permission for her to write to Dwynwen. It had hurt her terribly and she had vowed then never to see or have anything to do with him again. She would manage on her own, and she had man—she'd managed very well, and what was the end result of all her hard work and effort? Nothing! Here she was, on the way back to a place she'd vowed she'd never visit again, and in the company of the one man she'd promised herself she'd never speak to!

  CHAPTER TWO

  'Ankle hurting?' Owen had pulled into a motorway services area and Lallie nodded, her face white in the neon lights of the parking ground.

  'Mmm, a bit.' She put out a hand imploringly. 'Don't get me anything to eat, please, I feel sick.'

  'You aren't getting anything to eat,' came his brutal reply. 'You can have a glass of milk, I don't want you throwing up in my car.'

  Lallie wondered, and not for the first time, how he was able to alternate so quickly between kindness and downright bad manners, and came to the conclusion that he probably had a filthy liver or an enlarged spleen, although perhaps he'd had to break a date to come and fetch her. At this last thought, she smiled nastily.

  'Not even a sugar lump or a pat on the head?' she enquired in dulcet tones. 'My, my, Owen, you're slipping!'

  She watched him stalk off towards the services and her mouth curved into a smile. Outright defiance made him worse, sulkiness seemed to amuse him so that he treated her as though she was five years old again, but catty little remarks seemed to get under his skin. So when she had finished the plastic tot of milk which he brought her, she rested her head on the back of the seat, closed her eyes and thought up some more needling remarks which could be used when the occasion demanded.

  In the middle of one such remark, she fell asleep and woke up at the next stop, a transport cafe—one of the all-night ones on the Welshpool road, well past Shrewsbury. And there was Owen standing over her with a huge mug of hot tomato soup.

  'Try this,' he advised. 'It's hot—and then you can go back to sleep while it's still dark. It'll be breaking dawn in a couple of hours.'

  'Mmm, nice.' She finished the soup and felt like asking for more, it put a nice glow in her stomach and the heat of the thick mug warmed her fingers. Somehow, he managed to pick up her thought.

  'No more. The first one's always good, but any more and you'd be finding fault, saying it was out of a packet or a tin.'

  Lallie didn't want to sleep, she thought it better to stay awake, to talk just in case Owen felt sleepy himself, so she chatted in a sugary fashion with just a soupcon of vinegar at the back of it.

  'Who have you got coming in to look after us two invalids?' she asked sweetly. 'You're going to regret fetching me, aren't you?'

  'There'll be nobody coming to look after you, Lallie,' he grinned at her. 'That little sprain, it won't bother you much providing you don't do daft things like tottering around in those stupid high heels you wear and Nerys Roberts comes up from the village every day, eight till five, so all you'll have to do is to oversee her and do a bit of cooking. As for regretting bringing you,' he slid her a glance which was unfathomable, 'Dwynwen wants you, that's all that matters to me.'

  'I shall do the supervision from my invalid chair,' she snapped, then softened. 'Tell me what's been going on at Bryn Celyn since I left. Dwynwen writes once a month, as you probably know, I suspect you censor her letters—but they, the letters, aren't all that informative. How's Jonty?'

  'Living at the old Jones' sheep farm. I bought it last year when the old man died. There's a lot of room there and Jonty was wanting to go in for pigs as well as the sheep, but I'm sorry to say he's blotted his copybook as far as Dwynwen's concerned.'

  'No wonder Dwynny hasn't mentioned him!' She pulled a face. 'What's he done?'

  Owen took his attention from the road for a moment to slant a speculative glance at her. In the light of the dashboard it made him look demonic, then he turned his attention back to the road.

  'Three months ago he took on one of those agricultural students, a girl who wanted to learn a little more about sheep, and she's moved in with him. Dwynwen thinks they're living in sin!'

  'And are they?'

  He shrugged carelessly. 'Who knows? Maybe, maybe not, it's their own business.'

  This was Lallie's opportunity and she grabbed it with both hands. 'It runs in the family, doesn't it? Jonty has a shepherdess full time and you go in for "conferences"—what's the difference? Dwynwen never got hot under the collar about you, so why put Jonty on the black list?'

  'I was discreet.' He sounded smug.

  'And that makes it better?' The smugness upset her and she snorted down her small, straight nose.

  'You're all two-faced, that's what's the matter with you. Anything's acceptable as long as it's done in private. Was that what upset you so much about my little bit of trouble—the publicity? Would you have turned a blind eye if it hadn't been splashed all over the newspapers? "Leading actress in new play threatens to walk out on her husband, producer, because of shabby little affair with pert young typist". I wouldn't have minded so much if I'd done anything wrong, but you wouldn't believe me. Now I see why—I'd broken the cardinal rule, "Never be found out"!'

  'Nobody else believed you
either,' Owen pointed out calmly.

  Lallie closed her lips firmly on the hot words bubbling up in her throat. Let Owen think what he liked, it didn't hurt much any more, and she didn't have to justify herself to him. Compared with him, she was a stainless lily. She'd been conned, in the nicest possible way and by an expert who knew how to set the stage and exactly what words to use. They'd needed some extra publicity for the play, it hadn't been getting enough coverage in the press and she had walked into a situation deliberately set up, contrived to get them that maximum coverage needed before the play opened. A front page spread in every London daily with follow-ups, interviews and pictures in which Marla Lake, the star, was beautifully distressed and dreadfully hurt by her husband's infidelity. The kettle had been kept on the boil for over a week before Marla forgave all and her producer husband had her back as the star of his show and the wife of his bosom.

  Marla and her husband had both been very discreet, of course—never was the name of the 'pert little typist' mentioned, but the gentlemen of the press had fastened on the scent and Lallie's anonymity hadn't lasted very long. When the bomb burst, she had gone to the boss, the Whitechapel lady, and tendered her resignation, but her boss had raised her eyebrows, passed a heavily beringed hand over her titian dyed hair and told her to go home and have a re-think, while admitting that it was partly her fault in allowing Lallie to do outside work on the script alterations during rehearsals.

  'But Marla's husband chose you, my dear, and after all, you'd already done a lot of the work on the script, work which he said was very good. Think no more about it, I knew what they were up to as soon as I saw the papers that first day. Just a cheap and effective way of getting publicity—but by then it was too late.'

  So Lallie had continued working despite a great deal of harassment from the press until Owen had come up to London and hauled her away by the scruff of her neck.