The Waiting Time

by Margaret Carr

  It was a strange mixture for no-one around the table seemed to know anyone else and if business was discussed then it must have been in some sort of code, Jenny decided. Kane was correct in promising a short meal, for though the food was first rate and the men well replenished, every member of that strange group appeared ready to leave at the first opportunity.

  The drive up state had taken them forty minutes and for the first fifteen minutes of their return journey Jenny relaxed in a comfortable silence. It was dark now so it was some time before she realised that they were not returning by the same route.

  ‘Didn’t we come up route forty-seven?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, how silly of me not to explain. By taking this alternative route we’ll enter the opposite end of town and stop off for that drink I promised you.’

  The white two-story building they stopped in front of looked more like a family house than a drinking place. She recognised the late-night store on the opposite side of the road so knew with some relief that they were at least on home ground. What she wasn’t expecting was the difficulty she had in persuading Kane that she just wanted to get home.

  She wasn’t panicking exactly but she knew she was totally dependant on Kane for a lift. It wasn’t the kind of place where she could hail a taxi or walk home from, for there was often gaps of several miles between one part of town and the next.

  She was trying to disengage her hand from Kane’s when she glanced over his bowed head as he kissed her palm, and through the window saw a familiar car enter the well-lit parking lot. Surely not! She bit down hard on her lower lip as she watched Ryder climb awkwardly from the car and begin to cover the ground towards them. With a hasty apology to a shocked Kane she picked up her bag and dashed from the car. Ryder was only yards away when she blocked his path.

  ‘I’m so glad I bumped into you. Could you give me a ride home, please?’ she said quickly.

  A nerve flinched along his jaw as he studied her face in the overhead lighting.

  ‘What about your friend? Shouldn’t you tell him you’re going?’

  ‘I have. I explained that I was tired.’

  He limped forward, his hands clenched at his sides. Then, taking her by the arm, he marched her across to his car.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ she ground out, shaking loose his grip. ‘What are you doing out here anyway?’

  She was on the point of climbing into the car when he said, ‘Chasing after you, as usual.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The kid downstairs knocked me up. She said it was late and her boyfriend had come to give her a lift home, so could I see to Helen for her. She said I needn’t come down if I would just listen out for her. You must have been desperate to go out, to go and leave Helen in such irresponsible hands.’

  He had turned on the engine and was reversing out of the carpark. Jenny was livid.

  ‘How was I to know she would do a thing like that and come to that, where is Helen? If you’ve left her alone I’ll . . . ’

  ‘I put the fear of the devil on the girl and told her to stay where she was until I got back.’

  Jenny could have strangled Kane and his niece, but her rage at Ryder was totally unfocused. He was determined to misunderstand every single thing she did and that hurt.

  If she tried to explain about the business dinner she knew he would twist it into something it wasn’t and she would end up looking more like a wicked, uncaring mother than ever.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Back at the apartment, Ryder quickly paid off the sitter and showed her and her boyfriend the door. Jenny looked in on Helen who was fast asleep. An empty dish of ice cream on the bedside table and sticky papers scattered across the quilt indicated the need for bribery. Jenny shuddered, picked up the rubbish and empty dish and left the room.

  Ryder was standing in front of the fire recess. His features were rigid and Jenny, after one swift glance, ground her teeth and marched into the kitchen. He followed her across the room.

  ‘Did you do this sort of thing in England?’

  Jenny placed the dish in the sink and swung round to face him.

  ‘Did I do what sort of thing in England?’

  She felt the hot blood of anger rise up then fall away from her face, leaving her icy cold.

  ‘Leave Helen with strangers when you went dating.’

  ‘I never did any dating as you call it and if I had to go out at all, Patty took care of her.’

  His eyebrows lifted in an unbelieving expression as he turned to leave. Jenny crossed the floor behind him and sat down in a chair. She was weary and sick at heart at the sneering rejection she knew she would receive from him when she told him of Helen’s birth. But she had made herself a promise and she could delay telling him no longer.

  ‘Please don’t leave. There is something you have to know. Something I must tell you.’

  He was slow in turning back, almost as though he already knew what she was about to say. His brows pulled down in a frown as he accepted her invitation to sit in the chair opposite. Jenny took a deep breath.

  ‘Helen accepts you as her father, Ryder, because you are her father. I was eight weeks pregnant when you left for America. Your father supported me through college because he knew Helen was his grandchild. He agreed to withhold the information from you because we both felt that it would hinder your future ambitions.’

  The deathly silence which greeted her words was broken by a long hiss from Ryder’s throat. He’d lost what little colour he had as she spoke. She waited, eyes fixed on the top button of his jacket, for the disbelief, denial, denouncement. It never came. Instead, he rose to his feet and left the room without a word.

  * * *

  It was two days before she heard anything from him other than his footsteps down the stairs or the slam of a car door. She interpreted his silence as disbelief of her story and by the third day she had other things to worry her.

  They were well into September now and Jenny was enjoying her work at the school. The school bus would pick Helen up at eight-forty-five, then Jenny would drive down and prepare her class of seven-year-olds for the day. Helen would come in at three thirty and stay with Jenny until she was finished work then they would travel home together.

  Today Helen was in a grizzly mood and refused to go out to the school bus.

  ‘I want to go with you, Mummy,’ she repeated several times and burst into tears.

  This wasn’t like her at all and Jenny worried that she might be sickening for something, so she gave in and took her daughter with her.

  It wasn’t until later in the day that Helen’s teacher took Jenny aside and suggested that she thought Helen may be the victim of name calling or teasing and perhaps this was what had upset her.

  Jenny talked to Helen that evening before putting her to bed. It turned out that she and Anna had fallen out.

  ‘She was saying nasty things about you, Mummy.’

  Jenny comforted her as best she could.

  ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart. She’ll soon forget and then you will be friends again.’

  ‘No, I won’t. I don’t ever want to be her friend again.’

  Jenny didn’t blame Margaret’s daughter because she was well aware of what a little copy-cat the child was and knew she would only be repeating things she had heard in her mother’s company. Jenny was reluctant to tackle Margaret about the problem and hoped it would solve itself over the weekend.

  It was a horrible shock on Monday when Helen was brought to the nursery by her teacher, with a large bump on her head and a tear-stained face. Jenny’s first reaction was that Anna Mitchell had attacked her daughter. Then the shock really took hold when the teacher explained that Helen had been the guilty party.

  Jenny talked to her daughter again that evening. Helen hung her head but refused to reply and went off to bed without supper. The following morning she refused point blank to go to school. There were screams and tears and eventually she fled upstairs to Ryder’s door and sat sobbing in his door
step. Jenny was on the point of picking Helen up when the door was flung open and Ryder, taking one swift glance at what was going on, swooped down and enfolded the weeping child into his arms.

  ‘You had better come in,’ he called over his shoulder to Jenny as he marched down the hall with Helen.

  Jenny, angry at being put in this position by her daughter, moved down the hall and stood watching from the doorway as Ryder rocked the child back and forward as she sniffled into his shoulder. There was a suitcase and haversack standing against the living-room wall. Jenny’s eyes shot back to Ryder. Was he leaving for the Amazon already without a word to either of them?

  They hadn’t spoken to each other since the night she had revealed the truth to him about Helen. It seemed to her as though he was denying ever having been told.

  Helen’s sobs eased and she wriggled to get down. Ryder sat down in the nearest chair and took her on to his knee. His face was close to her chubby, flushed one as he spoke.

  ‘What is it, baby?’

  Helen’s eyes slid over to Jenny then up to her father.

  ‘Why don’t you want me, Daddy?’

  Jenny closed her eyes. Ryder’s face had turned to stone.

  ‘Who says I don’t want you?’

  ‘Mummy says you are my daddy but you don’t believe that I’m your little girl and we have to wait until you do.’

  His icy glare pinned Jenny. Over the little girl’s head his mouth screwed hatred and Jenny, feeling the pain and fear curdling in her stomach, dashed for the bathroom as it swirled up her throat. She wasn’t aware of his answers to Helen’s questions but when she came back out of the bathroom Helen left with her quietly.

  Back in the apartment, Helen went straight to her room and closed the door, something she had never done before. Deciding that her daughter needed her own company, Jenny let her be and phoned the school to say that she and Helen were both feeling under the weather and wouldn’t be coming in that day.

  In the days that followed, a subdued Helen agreed to accompany Jenny to school where she was allowed to stay quietly in her mother’s class. Margaret had rung with another offer of a shopping trip but Jenny had declined on the grounds that she couldn’t leave Helen at the moment. Margaret followed Jenny’s rebuff with a lecture on the dangers of pampering children and Jenny had to bite her tongue very hard not to point out that many of Helen’s problems had started with Margaret’s own daughter.

  A letter arrived from Patty to say that Tom was back from Spain and had called in to see her and to ask about Jenny. On its heels came one from Tom himself. He appeared to have forgiven her for her rejection of his summer holiday suggestion. The spell in Spain had been a great success, and there was an offer of a permanent teaching post should he want it. There were several pages of the fun and laughter he had shared with new friends and descriptions of new places and the impressions he had gained from them.

  He asked about her new life and after Helen. The writing had blurred as she came to the end of the letter. It took her a minute or two to realise that the blurring was because her eyes were full of unshed tears.

  She read the funny parts of the letters out to Helen who was starting to read quite well. Then the little girl handed over her own letter for Jenny to read. It was a postcard from Ryder! The picture on the front was of an iguana with a note on the back that explained what an iguana was and where it lived. On the bottom it was signed, Daddy.

  ‘It’s ugly,’ she said.

  On a sudden impulse Jenny said, ‘Helen, would you like to go home to England?’

  Helen’s eyes opened wide then she ran into Jenny’s arms and cried, ‘I want Patty.’

  * * *

  It took only a few days for Jenny to persuade the head to release her from her contract at the school. Then packing up as much as they could carry, Jenny booked tickets for their return flight to the UK.

  She had sold her car to pay for the tickets and was reluctant to ask Margaret for a lift to the airport. As it happened it wasn’t necessary. A neighbour who was also an air hostess was driving in that morning and offered to take them with her. It meant a longer wait at the airport but Jenny didn’t mind that.

  Jenny was buying some sweets to suck on take off and landing and a couple of comics for Helen when a hand tapped her on the shoulder.

  ‘Hi, there, who are you meeting?’

  Jenny jumped. Dan was standing behind her, the welcoming smile slowly changing to one of question as he saw their hand luggage.

  ‘Going somewhere?’ he asked.

  Helen piped up from her mother’s side.

  ‘We’re going home, Uncle Dan.’

  His glance swung back to Jenny, a puzzled frown on his face.

  ‘Home?’

  ‘To England. I kept my promise and told Ryder the truth, but he didn’t want to know.’

  ‘Does he know you’re going?’

  ‘No.’

  The big man looked uncomfortable.

  ‘I don’t understand. It’s not like Ryder to behave this way.’

  Jenny shrugged.

  ‘Won’t you wait until he comes back from this trip? Give him a chance to explain. There must be some reason for all this.’

  ‘No, Dan, I’m sorry. Say goodbye, Helen,’ she urged the little girl, then, taking her by the hand, walked away.

  * * *

  Patty gave them a warm if surprised welcome. She fed them and fussed over them insisting that they stayed awake to tell her all about America when jet lag would have had them curl up and go to sleep. They slept finally in Patty’s spare room.

  The next morning Patty broke the news that her house was full.

  ‘But I’ve a friend in Friar Street who can let you have a place. Not as big as the one you had here, mind, but it would do for now.’

  Jenny thought of the tiny flat upstairs and had great trouble trying to visualise anything smaller. Patty was watching anxiously for Jenny’s reaction.

  ‘If you don’t like the idea, you’re always welcome to have the spare room until you find something else. Maybe I could ask the Jenkins to move out,’ Patty said to herself.

  ‘Of course, you can’t,’ a horrified Jenny objected. ‘We’ll go to Friar Street.’

  Helen was sitting on Patty’s knee and she looked up to ask, ‘Will we have a swimming pool like we had at Daddy’s house?’

  ‘Well, there’s posh for you.’ Patty laughed. ‘No, my love, we don’t have houses with swimming pools around here.’

  Feelings of guilt swamped Jenny, but, she reasoned, she would find work and in time a little house. All she had to do was carry on where they’d left off when they’d gone to America.

  But soon that proved impossible. It had depended upon staying here with Patty who was always available for baby-sitting downstairs. The money she had set aside to keep them going until she found work soon vanished.

  The flat in Friar Street was like the one in Patty’s house but with only one bedroom instead of two. Tim was waiting for them one day when they returned to Patty’s.

  ‘Oh, Tim,’ Jenny cried, rushing over to him and flinging her arms around his neck.

  Tim wiggled his eyebrows at Helen where she danced up and down behind her mother, waiting for her turn to push between them.

  There were tears in Jenny’s eyes when she stepped back from him. Then she noticed how different he looked. He had filled out over the summer, lost the rangy look. His skin was smooth and still slightly tanned. He wasn’t her immature Tim anymore.

  ‘How did you know we were here?’

  ‘I phoned him,’ Patty admitted.

  Tim placed Helen back on the floor.

  ‘I thought we could go out for the day, catch up on all the news.’

  Jenny gave him a sad smile and nodded.

  There was a car outside by the kerb, second-hand but shiny. He took them to the park by the river and while they talked, Helen ran ahead scuffing the falling leaves of autumn.

  ‘Patty tells me she has no room
for you,’ Tim said.

  ‘We found a place just around the corner.’

  ‘Have you got a job?’

  ‘Give me a chance, Tim. We’ve only just arrived.’

  ‘I know, only I thought perhaps that was what had brought you home, the offer of a job.’

  ‘No. I need to find one quickly.’

  ‘There’s a position in the school I work in. Twelve to thirteen year olds. Big classes though, inner city, bit on the rough side. But if you think you can handle it I’ll put a word in for you.’

  ‘I’d be grateful, Tim, for anything to tide me over.’

  It was several weeks later when Jenny had the offer of a larger flat. She had drawn her first salary from the school she now worked at with Tim. It was hard, thankless work but the money was welcome. They used Tim’s car to ferry hers and Helen’s few possessions to the other side of town. The new flat was unfurnished and it was while they were laughing over the task of fitting a carpet Jenny had bought in a sale and that now turned out to be far too big that there was a loud knocking on the outside door.

  Jenny got up and ran down the stairway to answer it. She was attempting, with dirty hands, to rub a smut from her face as she threw open the door. Her knees weakened to the point of collapse when she saw Ryder standing there.

  He looked her up and down, a scowl on his face, and a crumpled parcel of flowers in one hand. After the initial shock she felt hysterical laughter run up her throat but before it had time to escape, he was talking to her.

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to invite me in? I’ve had to drag over half the city looking for you. I found Patty eventually and she told me you were in the process of moving.’

  He was stepping over the threshold as he spoke.

  ‘Who is it, Jen? Do you need any help?’ Tim called down from the head of the stairs.

  Ryder threw his head back to look up at the younger man.

  ‘No, she doesn’t and it’s her husband.’

  He thrust the flowers into her hands and turned to go. In the time it took Jenny to recover her wits, Ryder had climbed into a grey saloon and started the engine. She called after him through a blur of tears but the car pulled out into the traffic and was gone.