The Director's Wife

by Lindsay Armstrong

  ‘Who…’ But she stopped as a dread premonition struck her. ‘Not…?’

  He stared at her. ‘Yes. Bronwen Bishop.’

  Cathy closed her eyes, but it didn’t shut the images she could see in her mind’s eye. She’d never seen Bronwen Bishop in the flesh, but she was an established enough actress to be instantly recognisable to most Australians, and she did have large dark eyes, a willowy figure and, if not conventional beauty, a compelling quality that was both essentially feminine and vitally arresting. She was in her early thirties, Cathy guessed. A tough lady, Duncan had said—and of course, Duncan probably knew about her and Tom, which explained his reservations and slight unease.

  ‘Do you still love her?’ she asked.

  Tom took a long time to answer. ‘If I knew the truth about that, I might be able to tell it to myself, Cathy,’ he said eventually. ‘It doesn’t seem possible that love could exist along with the other emotions she generated in me—hate sometimes, despair, scorn, a desire, to be honest, to strangle her sometimes … The important thing is, I made the decision to sever the relationship and put it all behind me.’ He lifted his eyes at last to hers. ‘And since I made that decision, and since I married you, that’s what I have done. Contrary to what you think, I haven’t been unfaithful to you, Cathy, with her or anyone else.’

  A thought ran through Cathy’s mind—I’m too young to cope with this, too immature to even contemplate those dark emotions without a shiver and a desire to wish I’d never known… Then a tremor ran through her, and she knew they were cowardly thoughts and exactly what he’d believed of her.

  ‘But,’ she said with an effort, ‘you’re making this film with her?’

  Tom smiled rather bleakly. ‘Not from choice, but I knew it could happen one day if we both continued to live and work in Australia.’ He lifted his shoulders.

  Their gazes caught in the firelight. ‘Cathy,’ he said slowly, still staring into her eyes, ‘I wish I could make you understand and believe that there’s part of me solely reserved for you and that will never change. Nor will I be betraying you, whatever happens.’

  Sudden tears shone in her eyes but didn’t fall. She said with difficulty, ‘I suppose I should thank you for that and for being honest, but can you understand how I feel now?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said abruptly, ‘but tell me anyway.’

  But that proved astonishingly hard to do, and she could only stare across at him with succeeding expressions of frustration, sorrow and helplessness.

  Tom muttered, ‘Oh, hell!’ almost beneath his breath, then rose swiftly and pulled her out of her chair and into his arms.

  Cathy was too stunned and confused to protest and, in spite of everything, the familiar feeling of his arms around her, his mouth on hers, the feeling of being safe—although how that could be now, she didn’t know—claimed her.

  He picked her up and carried her through to the bedroom, took her robe off and her white and red dotted pyjamas and put her beneath the covers like a child, then after a brief interval he slid in beside her and gathered her close again. Then he began to make love to her in a way that was impossible for her to resist and that made her think dimly that her taunt about him not really understanding women would probably haunt her for ever. Unless she was an unusually arousable one, it occurred to her, as he stroked the soft skin from her armpit to her waist and other satiny, vulnerable areas like the nape of her neck, the small of her back—as he often did before he laid claim to any of the more intimate parts of her body. And so that she was relaxed, soothed yet revelling in his arousal of her smooth, naked skin and feeling a rhythm of movement, a rhythm of desire welling up in her.

  But as the rhythm claimed her and she moved against him, needing the feel of his lean, hard body on hers, an agitation also rose in her. A sudden expression that broke the bounds of what he was doing to her, of resentment that he could still do it while he loved another woman; an angry, confused urge to assert her imprint on him.

  ‘Cat…’ He said her name on a breath once, but she moved her head back and her blue eyes blazed briefly in a warning of some kind that silenced him into a narrow, probing look. He said no more, but responded to her sudden fierce urgency by easing his weight on to her, and all her soft, scented flesh became consumed with a need to drive him to the kind of distraction he was driving her to.

  All conscious thought fled from her mind as he took possession of her body, and she moved beneath him and raked his back with her fingers, straining her breasts against him, and he buried his face in the curve of her neck and held her unflinchingly as if he understood… And all the time his possession of her deepened and quickened, more than she’d thought possible, and she felt the long muscles of his back ripple as he moved on her and heard his breath come shorter and felt his heart beating heavily as he drove her inexorably towards the only fulfilment that would slake the terrible agitation of her mind and heart and body.

  It was a climax when it came that was shattering in its intensity, that left her gasping and shuddering and feeling as if she was falling down an endless cliff. It was a curious mixture of pleasure and pain and like none that had ever happened to her before, and when she was capable of thought again and capable of quietening at last, her first thought was how it had been for Tom. Her lashes fluttered up, and it was only when she saw him through a haze of tears that she realised she’d been crying silently. She blinked and licked her lips. ‘Tom…?’

  He stared down at her sombrely and smoothed her hair. ‘Don’t talk.’

  ‘But——’

  ‘No, Cathy. Relax—I’ll help.’

  ‘Will it hurt me to talk?’ she whispered.

  ‘You’re going to hurt a bit tomorrow. That was…’ He stopped and cautiously rolled away from her, then immediately reclaimed her in his arms. ‘Go to sleep,’ he murmured.

  ‘My head is sore—why my head?’

  ‘It’ll go,’ he said quietly.

  ‘But I have to say something——’

  ‘You don’t have to say anything. I understand how you felt and it’s not your fault. I should never have——’

  ‘I know about all the things you shouldn’t have done!’ she said in a stronger voice, and struggled to sit up. He let her go finally. ‘What I don’t know is—how we’ll be able to go on, and what I really don’t know,’ her voice sank and tears beaded her lashes again, ‘is whether you liked that or—hated it.’

  ‘I obviously didn’t… hate it.’

  But she caught the faint hesitation, and she saw how his eyes were narrowed and intent as he watched the twisted, awkward way she was sitting with the sheet clutched to her breasts which rather accurately reflected the state of her mind.

  ‘All the same,’ she said more to herself, ‘why do I get the feeling I’ve done myself some harm in your eyes?’ She stared at him, but he had crossed his arms behind his head as she spoke and he looked perfectly normal now, breathing easily, his dark-fair hair wayward, but then it always was, his eyes unreadable—he looked, even in the aftermath of love, all the things that had troubled her before their marriage—attractive, slightly dangerous, so far out of her real reach… And not as if he were suffering a pounding headache.

  ‘It’s not a question of that, Cathy,’ he said gently but nevertheless with an underlying emphasis, like a steel fist in a velvet glove, she thought, and realised why as he continued. ‘As to how we go on, we have no option but to go on as before, although with some adjustments, but essentially as what we are—man and wife, and what we’ll remain,’ he added.

  Cathy’s lips parted, then she put her hands up to her face and closed her eyes. Tom pulled one hand from behind his head and closed it round her wrist, fingering the narrowness of it and the soft skin inside it. Then with a little tug, he pulled her back into his arms.

  She found she didn’t have the strength to do anything but lie quietly in his embrace, and she fell asleep not long afterwards.

  CHAPTER THREE

  CATHY woke alo

ne to a grey, wet morning and lifted her head cautiously off the pillow, but her headache had gone. The rest of her as she moved her limbs cautiously beneath the covers felt lethargic but warm, and she decided to stay where she was and try to review everything that had happened.

  She got no further, though, because the door opened and Tom came in with a tray in his hands. Their eyes caught, and Cathy felt herself colour and looked away awkwardly.

  ‘I don’t think,’ he said rather wryly, ‘it can be a bad thing for a two-year-old marriage to be capable of surprising itself occasionally—if that’s why you’re feeling embarrassed, Cathy.’ He put the tray down on her bedside table, but stood looking down at her with a question mark in his eyes.

  With an abruptness that took her by surprise, her awkwardness deserted her to be replaced by annoyance. ‘I’m sorry if you feel we’d got into a same old “routine” situation, Tom,’ she said tartly, ‘but perhaps your heart and soul were never really in it?’

  ‘That wasn’t what I was trying to say at all, Cat,’ he replied evenly.

  ‘What, then?’ she shot at him.

  ‘Look, sit up and have some breakfast instead of spitting at me like an angry kitten,’ he recommended, and reached for her robe.

  She closed her eyes in extreme frustration. ‘You don’t think I have cause to be upset?’

  ‘I do,’ he agreed briefly, and pulled the blankets back.

  Cathy sat up with an angry gasp, because although two years of marriage had seen her lose a lot of the inhibitions that had caused Tom to call her his convent-bred little puritan from time to time, to be naked and on display for him now seemed to her to be an outrage and an insult. ‘Don’t…’ she whispered fiercely, trying to gather back the covers.

  But he did. With an easy strength, he not only kept her wrists in one hand but he also thoroughly inspected her upper body, her satiny breasts and nipples of the palest, furled pink, her slender neck, for signs of their torrid lovemaking. As he touched his fingers lightly to the few marks blemishing her skin she flinched, suddenly realising her breasts were sensitive and sore.

  He took his hand away, but she trembled and couldn’t tear her gaze away, and to her horror, realised why. Her hapless body, almost with a mind of its own, wanted him to go on gentling it, soothing it as if the defeat she had suffered in the night had been right and proper. And it had been a defeat, she realised. Her confused ‘statement’ had merely left her broken and crying in his arms and dashed against his strength and unassailability—perhaps further from him mentally than she had ever been. Well, she thought rebelliously, managing to look away at last but with a tinge of pink growing in her cheeks, I’d be stupid to make that mistake again.

  But Tom took her chin and tilted her head back. ‘What are you thinking?’

  She said nothing for a moment, but she couldn’t and didn’t even try to hide the hostility in her eyes and about her mouth. ‘Can I have my robe?’ she asked.

  Something flickered in his eyes, and he hesitated, then sat back and handed it to her. Cathy pulled it on and bunched the pillows up, and he put one of his on her lap and put the tray on it. There was orange juice, a boiled egg and toast.

  Cathy stared at them and discovered she’d never felt less like eating, but Tom picked up her hand, put the glass into it. ‘Go on. You have to eat. How’s your head?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said coolly, although she was battling desperately for composure because she hated him for reminding her and felt like doing something essentially childish, such as pouring the juice over him… ‘As a matter of interest, is there a clinical explanation for it? That you might have encountered in your much greater experience?’ She raised the glass to her lips and sipped the juice, but she felt like biting the glass, she discovered.

  He smiled drily and she knew she had been childish. ‘No. But you’re liable to give yourself a headache when you do anything with the intensity you—we employed last night, that’s all.’

  ‘It didn’t give you one.’ She drained the glass and set it down sharply on the tray.

  ‘I’m obviously a much tougher nut,’ he replied with some irony, and handed her an egg-spoon.

  She cracked the egg with a ringing blow, then flung the spoon down and put her hand to her eyes. ‘Go away, Tom,’ she whispered shakily, ‘and take your breakfast with you, please. Because I’m not sure if I want to cry or I want to die, but I want to do it on my own——’

  ‘No, Cathy,’ he said harshly, ‘you’re not going to do either, you’re going to eat your breakfast and we’re going to talk this out.’

  ‘You can’t make me——’

  ‘I could, but I won’t—I will point out that you told me yourself last night you were an adult and resented being treated otherwise—well, here’s a chance to prove it. I’m going to get the coffee.’ He stood up, stared down at her with a plain warning in his eyes, then turned away.

  Cathy watched him go, then turned her attention to her maltreated egg and deliberately ate it all, and the toast, and pushed the tray away, waiting.

  He made no comment when he came back with the coffee, but removed the tray and pulled a chair up beside the bed. In deference to the cold wet morning, he wore his beloved old plaid dressing-gown over only his pyjama bottoms. The vagaries of the weather seldom affected him, Cathy had discovered; in fact he seemed to gather inspiration from the worst elements of it.

  And it was with a curious sinking feeling that she eyed him over the rim of her cup. She’d eaten her breakfast in a spirit of defiance and resentment over and above a whole host of emotions, but the reality of getting through to him and making him admit the terrible error of his ways, which was what she burningly wanted, suddenly seemed monumental.

  She sighed and slipped dispiritedly down the pillows.

  He took her cup. ‘Cathy?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ she murmured. ‘I’m listening. How are we going to sort this out?’

  ‘Have you come to any profound conclusions about it?’ he countered.

  Cathy laughed huskily, a small, desolate sound, and turned her cheek to the pillow. ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not, for example,’ he said evenly, ‘suddenly filled with a burning desire to leave me?’

  ‘You make it sound such a ridiculously childish thing to even contemplate,’ she said bitterly after a moment. ‘Why shouldn’t it be an option?’

  ‘Where would you go?’

  She shrugged. ‘Back where I came from. Back to spinsterhood but older and wiser,’ she said very quietly.

  ‘Had you thought of it, Cathy?’ Tom asked curtly.

  ‘No.’ She moved restlessly as her mind was filled with images of her pre-Tom West life. ‘Not yet…Tom?’ She sat up abruptly and captured his gaze. ‘Why are you treating me as if I’m in the wrong?’

  His eyes didn’t waver and she could see the little green flecks in them. Then he rubbed a hand along his blue-shadowed jaw and said, ‘As a defence against corrupting the innocent, probably. Cat, life is rarely perfect, unfortunately, and I’m one of the imperfect specimens peopling it. But one thing I need to make clear is that it’s over between me and Bronwen and I have neither the desire to nor the intention of rekindling it. Wait,’ he said as she opened her mouth. ‘I understand that saying it is one thing and living with it another from your point of view, but what you’re living with is not the ghost of another woman—what I felt for Bronwen and what I feel for you are two different things.’

  ‘Do you mean you don’t think of her…when you’re sleeping with me, Tom?’ she asked on a breath.

  ‘No!’ He said it harshly and definitely, but there was a sudden glint of compassion in his eyes. ‘Do you honestly think I’m capable of that?’ he added.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, pleating the sheet. ‘Are there different kinds of love for different women?’

  A nerve flickered in his jaw as he stared down at her. ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘I do know, however, that the way I am is probably a mixture of my natural nature and the cynicism and disillusionment Bronwen left me with—but don’t imagine the blame lies solely with her. In some respects I’m a loner, and I always will be, I suspect. She certainly accused me of it and told me I expected a total commitment from her when I couldn’t give it myself. If that’s true then I was far more in error than she was. Unfortunately, again, acknowledging these things doesn’t always make them go away. But if you could live with the kind of man I am, now that it’s all out in the open, what we do share is… something to build on.’

  Cathy went on playing with the sheet, then she raised her eyes at last and wiped them with the back of her hand. ‘You’re being very honest again,’ she said huskily, ‘so I’ll have to be honest in return. What’s to build?’

  ‘We could start with you. One thing I can acknowledge and change is that it would be supremely selfish to expect you to go on as before. And this—doing Chloe, I mean—will at least be a positive step forward for you.’ He got up and went to the dressing-table to get her a tissue.

  ‘It couldn’t be a more ironic way for me to take that step, though, could it?’ She blew her nose. ‘I only wish I weren’t now—is it too late?’

  He sat down again. ‘To pull out? No. And,’ he shrugged, ‘it will be loaded with ironies, I guess, but you said you needed a challenge; perhaps it’s what we both need.’

  ‘It’ll certainly give you the opportunity to hold us up against each other, Tom,’ she said with an oblique look.

  ‘That wasn’t what I had in mind, Cat,’ he said abruptly.

  Cathy laid her head back. ‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know what to say.’

  ‘Neither do I any more.’

  She lifted her head and stared at him intently until he said roughly, ‘All the way, right from when I asked you to marry me in a moment of aberration and guilt, I had one harmless motive, Cat—I didn’t want to see you hurt. At least, I thought it was harmless, but that’s where I was in the wrong, my dear, because it might have hurt you less… but,’ he paused, ‘be that as it may. I’m also trying to say that if you can handle it, I’d much rather you stayed with me than left me, because that part of me capable of loving cares more about you than anything else. And is prepared to cut the Cinderella cord, to prove it. But,’ again he paused, ‘it’s not going to be easy to work together, it wouldn’t be under the best of circumstances.’

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