by Georgia Hill
“That’s unfair and you know it!” I knew I was beyond control. We were both shouting now, at full volume, heedless of who could hear us.
Jack sneered, “He always was a pet of yours, wasn’t he? You like your pets, don’t you? I’m surprised you’ve got time for Tony now you’ve got Rupert following you about like a little puppy!”
For a minute I was utterly speechless. “That’s a foul thing to say.” I managed, after a second of deafening silence.
Jack came to me suddenly. I backed against the bookcase as he loomed nearer, his huge presence dominating the room. His face was white and there was sheen of sweat on his forehead. He looked unleashed, terrifying. He put his hands to my face, holding it with little gentleness. I looked up into his eyes which were blazing with heat. I could feel my anger treacherously melting into another emotion. Lust pooled in my stomach and my heart began to race to a different rhythm.
“I can’t do this any more,” he ground out through gritted teeth as his hands tightened painfully on my face. “How you love to taunt me. Why do you persist in pushing me to my limit?”
He launched himself at me and our mouths meshed with a frantic clash of teeth, tongues and lips. From somewhere a long way off, I thought I heard him murmuring all the while: “Nicky, oh my Nicky. How can I bear it?”
His trembling hand found my breast and I felt the nipple harden with his touch. He groaned urgently and pushed me against the bookcase and I slammed up against the files it contained. I didn’t care. This was intoxicating. His lips met the tender and sensitive part of my neck and, as he pulled me closer, I could feel the male hardness of him. My knees buckled and it was only he who held me up. My hands fought their way into his hair and I knotted my fingers through it, pulling him into me. It was madness.
“This is madness,” he echoed the thought. He gasped as he broke away and turned from me. He strode over to the other side of the small room and put up his hands against the wall, almost as if needing its support. His back was to me but I could see his chest heaving with the effort of controlling his breath and his temper.
And his passion.
This time I had certainly seen beyond the controlled man. The emotions which I now knew were simmering beneath his relentless calm had finally exploded. And it seemed they had exploded for me. The passion hinted at in the cottage had surged into full power.
My legs were trembling; every part of me was shaking. I clutched the files behind me and they cut into my fingers. I held onto the pain as a contact with reality. My lips felt bruised and swollen with the ferocity of his kisses. I should have felt violated, appalled but I felt triumphant in my female power over this incredible man. It was as if I had been waiting for this very moment for eternity.
The moment freeze-framed.
“This is madness,” he repeated, hoarsely. “Anybody could have walked in.”
Then he turned back to me with a sudden realisation. “Oh God Nicky, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you? Please say I didn’t hurt you?” He came back to me and held my face, softly this time, between his still trembling hands. “I couldn’t bear it if I hurt you.”
His long fingers roamed over my face, delicately outlining my lips. I closed my eyes in rapture. Ferocity had, in an instant, transformed itself into tenderness and it was far more devastating. I waited again for his lips to touch mine, for the furnace to blaze anew. This was the Jack I knew, the man I loved. His hands dropped away to my arms. I felt momentarily bereft.
“Tell me you feel the same.” He shook me. “Tell me. I can feel it. I can feel it when you kiss me. Tell me you love me as I love you.”
“I love you.” I uttered it as a wild cry. “Of course I love you!”
This brought him back to me. He kissed me again, a kiss so full of love that it tore at me.
“Nicky. What the Hell are we going to do about it?”
As he had at the cottage, he rested his forehead on mine and groaned.
I thought rapidly, forcing myself to concentrate. I put my hand up to his face and forced him to look me in the eye. “Jack, it really doesn’t have to be so difficult. We can be discreet while you’re still working here. We’ll sort something out when you have to go away.” I said the words harshly. I needed him to believe me. As far as I could see his fear was the only thing stopping us. I vowed to myself that I would make him understand that he could do this. That his lack of trust in anything intimate was stopping right now. Right here. With me. “Why are you so scared of this?” I asked, on a long, drawn out sigh.
“Because I never thought it would happen to me,” he breathed. He caressed my hair, a look of immense concentration in his eyes. “I never thought I deserved someone like you.” He looked deep into my eyes and my love flowered in the intensity I saw blazing there. It was going to be all right.
“We’re going to do this. I’ll make it happen.” I said in a steely voice.
He managed a smile and ran a trembling hand though my hair. “My practical Nicky,” he said on a shaky laugh. “You think anything’s possible don’t you?”
“Yes,” I replied in a determined voice. “You know me, I like a good problem to get my teeth into.” I gave a tremulous laugh of my own and then kissed him, hard.
Jack’s teeth gleamed in a shadow of a smile. “I’m a beginner in all of this. You’ll have to teach me,” he murmured, as he grazed his mouth over mine.
“That’s what I’m good at. Teaching.” I kissed him once again, aching to return to his lips. It was threatening to get out of control. It was as if, now we had begun to touch one another, we couldn't stop. Every time we broke apart our hands and mouths found one another again, touching, exploring, wondering. Then eventually, we remembered where we were and sanity began to restore itself. We stood holding one another, laughing a little, still shaken by the emotions storming our hearts and bodies.
A sharp knock on the office door brought us back to reality. As we sprang apart guiltily, we heard Mona coughing outside.
“Mr. Thorpe. Jack?”
I had a pretty good idea she knew exactly what had been going on inside the room and was attempting to be discreet. Jack and I smiled at one another, making a secret promise to see this through to its natural conclusion later.
“Jack, there's a ‘phone call for you. It's your sister on the line.” Mona’s voice began to get tight with anxiety. “Jack, I'm afraid it's your father.”
And so, just as we had begun to find one another, we were torn apart. With just one ‘phone call.
I sat in the office, wrapped in a little glow of selfish love and lust, too stunned to think and too stupid to realise what a ‘phone call from Jenny might mean.
Jack returned a few minutes later. I'd had time to restore some equilibrium. Jack looked ashen.
“That was Jenny. I have to go to Manchester. My father, they think they’ve found him. He's dead, Nicky. My father's dead.”
He sat down abruptly at his desk, looking down into his shaking hands. I went to him and put my arms around him, willing comfort into his unresponsive body.
“Jack, it’s all right. Of course you must go to your family.”
“I couldn’t do anything to stop this.”
“Of course you couldn’t,” I cried, shocked that he should think like this.
“All my life I’ve hated him. And now he’s dead and I hate myself for not preventing it.” The note of cold despair was in his voice again.
“Jack, there was nothing you could do. You said yourself, he wouldn’t accept any help. What could you have done to change anything?” I gave him a little shake. “You couldn’t do anything about this. What you can do now is go to your family.” I kept my voice and words matter of fact.
He clutched at me. “But I can’t leave you. Not now.” He gazed into my eyes again, with that same burning look of love and desire. “I can’t bear to leave you now.” He pulled me onto his lap and kissed me long and hard and left me breathless.
After some time more pract
ical matters took hold. “I can’t leave the school. Nicky, I don’t know how long I’m going to be away.”
I laughed shakily. Only Jack would think of school at a time like this. “You’ve got to go. I’ll be fine, the school will be fine,” I said it with far more confidence than I felt. “I can run this school, Jack. I’ve learned from the master.” I smiled thinly. “And if Ofsted come, then so be it!”
“I love you. Never forget that. I love you.” He said it fiercely.
“I know. And I’ll be here when you return. I’ll wait. It doesn’t matter how long it’ll take. I’ll wait for you. I’m not going anywhere.”
In the end I drove Jack to the station. I was reluctant to let him drive all that way in such an emotional state. There was no point bothering with the local station, it was too late for any trains from there and anyway, he would have to change at Birmingham. So I drove him to New Street.
We sat on the diesel fume filled platform talking in fits and starts, holding hands in a futile effort to delay the moment we knew we would have to part. As a place for a romantic tryst it was far from ideal. Putting a railway station underneath a shopping centre might have solved a planning problem but it robbed every vestige of romance from even the little that modern high-speed trains have.
I felt such a mixture of emotions: exhilaration at my declaration of love; my final and irrevocable acceptance of the nature of the man, of his innate reserve with the passion hidden beneath; of the difficulties that I now knew I was willing to take on. And underneath all this, shamefully, lay base lust for the man sitting beside me and frustration at not being able to act upon it.
“I don’t know how long I’m going to be away,” Jack said. He appeared quite calm now. But I was finally getting to know him. I knew his controlled exterior was the shield he used to protect himself. “Jenny said Mum has fallen apart. Not surprising really. Jenny’s no good in a crisis either. They always relied on me. I’ve always had to pick up the pieces.” Then a thought obviously occurred to him because he said in a quiet voice: “Nicky, do you think I’ll have to identify the body? I don’t know if I can. I just don’t know if I can do that.”
I shuddered, I didn’t think I could do that either. But I knew the man beside me was made of sterner stuff than I. “You’ll do it Jack. You’re strong and brave and good. You’ve never run away from your responsibilities.”
“I ran away from you,” he said ruefully, bleak humour reasserting itself.
“Never again though,” I managed to laugh.
“No, never again,” he replied and his fingers tightened their grip on mine.
“I’m sticking to you like glue and you know I don’t give up easily.”
“I’ve never known you to give up on anything or anyone.” Jack laughed shortly. Then he added in a different voice, “Don’t give up on me, Nicky. You won’t, will you?”
“Never,” I said through sudden tears and held him close. I clung to him trying to be brave and feeling desolate.
“I love you,” I said through the announcement of the train to Manchester. Now I’d said it once, it seemed I couldn’t stop. It was my mantra. He kissed me one last time and then boarded the train.
I followed him along the outside of the train and, once he found a seat, put my hand up to the window. Cruel technology denied us the ability to open it and we had to content ourselves with pressing our hands to either side of the cold glass, oblivious to the stares of the other passengers. Weakly, I gave in to the threatening tears. It was too hard to let go of him now.
“I love you,” I mouthed to him, once more. He nodded curtly and looked down, unable to meet my eyes. The train gave a violent shunt and moved and then he was gone.
Chapter Seventeen
Over the next few weeks I learned some valuable lessons. I learned that I was so much stronger than I had ever thought. I learned how to deal with a crushing workload. I was still teaching in the mornings and had, somewhat uneasily, recruited Tony to cover the afternoons. I learned I had supportive colleagues in school and loving friends and family to see me through. But I didn’t have the one person I truly wanted. So I learned to be alone.
Jack ‘phoned when he could, which wasn’t nearly often enough. The calls were stilted and rather dreadful. Our fear of saying something upsetting, that we could not explain adequately over the line, made us overcautious and reserved. It was all curiously unsatisfying. It all felt unfinished, with something hanging in the air, unsettled.
Jack told me he had to stay in Manchester for some time. His mother and sister were not coping well and there were legalities to sort out. He’d given me a brief outline of the excruciating day he’d had to identify his father’s body and I longed to be with him, to offer him something as comfort. During one painful call he had explained that he had found out he couldn’t be released from his contract with the government and so would be working in London for the Autumn term at least. I’d been tired that night, worn out from an angry exchange with a parent and had reacted bitterly and resentfully. I’d rung back immediately, full of remorse and teary apologies. I’d wanted to drive straight up to Manchester that night but I had school the following day. I had responsibilities now.
Enormous ones.
Huw had given me the tip-off that school would probably be given an Ofsted inspection in June.
When there’s a gaping hole in one part of your life you can attempt to cope by filling it with something else. Once again work came to my aid. I lived, breathed and ate school and it went some way to ease the pain of my longing for Jack and my loneliness.
The staff reacted predictably to the news that we were to be inspected again, and this time by Ofsted. Ann worked as many hours as I, Rupert grew thin and pale, Mona became even more frighteningly efficient and Helen ran around fuelled by nervous energy and constantly shrieked at us all.
One afternoon, too exhausted to face even the short drive home to an empty flat, I dropped in to see my parents. As I walked up the driveway I could hear Mum and Joyce chatting in the back garden. Mum had continued to improve after her visit to Andy. She and Joyce ganged up on Dad at every eventuality and made his life hell. He was enjoying every minute of it. The three of them were even talking about going back to Spain for a return visit when the weather became cooler in the Autumn. I felt a pang of true sympathy for my brother when I heard the news.
I put up my hand to the two women who were sitting out on the patio enjoying some late afternoon sun, shouted across that yes, I would love a cup of tea and no, I didn’t want a gin and tonic and eventually tracked down my father in his garden shed.
Ostensibly he was tidying up. I suspected it was the only place he could find some peace and quiet to listen to his beloved cricket commentary on his ancient radio.
He rose stiffly to greet me. “Nicky love, how nice to see you.” Then he looked closely at my face and noted the strain. “Still working too hard I see.”
“No choice Dad,” I replied gloomily. “They’re coming next week.” I’d had the official ‘phone call that day.
He nodded in sympathy. He knew only too well who ‘they’ were.
I leaned against the old tool bench that had featured so heavily in my childhood and lovingly fingered the grooves that Andy and I had carelessly made when trying out Dad’s tools.
“How’s Mum?” I asked, as casually as I could. It was still a tricky subject to broach with my father, as I supposed it always would be.
He held up his hand to silence me for a minute and listened intently to the latest Worcestershire score. “Never better,” he answered stoutly. He tutted. “But I don’t know where that woman gets her energy from.” I knew that he was referring not to Mum but to Joyce. “Still, I suppose it’s down to her that your mother’s better.” He jerked his head in the vague direction of the patio. “She’s got them both going regularly to the WI now, you know. That’s what they’re jabbering about.”
I smiled. I knew Dad was as pleased as punch at Mum getting involv
ed. “Why aren’t you out there, enjoying the weather?” After a slow start, the Summer was turning warm.
“There’s a limit to even my knowledge about Victoria sponges, Nicky.”
I admitted he had a point. There was what looked like a pile of netting on the bench beside me. I fingered it cautiously.
Dad saw me. “That’s your old hammock. Do you remember it? We used to have it hung up at the old house. You and Andy used to bicker something terrible about whose turn it was to get in it.”
And then we’d end up in it together I recalled, thinking back to far simpler days.
“Thought it would go a treat in that garden of yours,” Dad said. He picked up a flowerpot and stacked it inside another.
I thought of the little garden at the barn with its trees at the far end.
“I could put it up for you if you like.”
I knew he was trying to reach out to me. I knew this was his way of saying that he cared and he was telling me not to worry about the inspection. “That would be nice Dad,” I murmured, wondering when I’d ever get the time to lie in it. I put my hand on his and he grunted, embarrassed.
Joyce interrupted our moment by poking her nose around the door of the shed. “There you are, you two. Nicky! How are you? Time for a little drink, lovie?” She waved a jug of Pimms at me and some slopped out onto the dusty floor.
I looked at her. She was dressed in an orange sundress; her skin burned a similar colour through injudicious exposure to the sun and thought ‘What the hell.’ The paper work heaped in an untidy pile at home in the flat could wait. Besides, there was something I wanted to discuss with Joyce and this was as good a time as any.
I beamed at her. “I can’t think of anything I’d like better. And Joyce - there’s a vacancy on the governing body at school. I don’t suppose you’re interested?”
The week of the inspection loomed. Everyone was experiencing a weird kind of stage fright, the sort that actors get at last minute rehearsals. I offered up a silent prayer of thanks that Ofsted hadn’t visited a few weeks ago, during the SATs and then started to panic at how we were going to keep the Year Six pupils onboard, now they were well and truly demob happy.
