Another Life

by Rosemary Carter

  'You don't understand me now,' she said, her voice shaky.

  Clyde's thumb left her chin and began a slow stroking movement, up towards the lobe of one ear, then down, along the sensitive column of a slim throat, sending shivers coursing down her spine.

  'Some parts of you I understand,' he said softly, so close to her that the warmth of his breath fanned her cheek. 'Your senses give you away every time.'

  'You do excite me,' Sara acknowledged steadily, her eyes meeting his. 'You know that. But that's where our level of communication ends.'

  'I refuse to believe that.' Still the same movement, tantalising in its slowness. 'You can't go on like this, Sara.'

  'I'm perfectly happy.'

  'No, darling, you're not.'

  Darling! It came to her that he had used the word earlier. Joy leaped suddenly inside her. Perhaps after all she could tell Clyde all that she had kept bottled up inside her for so long.

  And then she remembered Andrea, and knew that any love Clyde had felt for Sara herself no longer existed. 'Darling' was an endearment used loosely by many people; Clyde must be one of them.

  'I am happy,' she insisted dully. 'I… I'm not the girl you once knew, Clyde. My values have changed, the things I like… But I am happy.'

  The hand moved lower. It began to trail a path towards the cleavage of the dress, the fingers inserting themselves into the hollow between her breasts; caressing, teasing. It became harder and harder to maintain an expressionless interior when inside her she felt an agonising desire.

  'If what you say is true,' said Clyde, never ceasing his movement, 'then you'd have agreed to come to the ballet with me the first time I asked you. And you wouldn't have been so affected tonight.'

  'I don't want to talk about it any more.' Restlessly she tried to turn away from him. And found that she could not. There was a sinuous magic in Clyde's hand that held her captive more surely than a grip of iron could have done.

  'You must talk.' His voice was more gentle than she had heard it. 'Sara, you can't continue to isolate yourself from the world. There must be a reason why you don't want to dance. You must talk to people. To me…'

  She had to end this conversation, quickly, before his spell could bring about her undoing. She closed her eyes against the handsomeness so close to her. It was harder to shut off her awareness of a maleness that dizzied her. But when she spoke her voice was surprisingly firm.

  'I do talk to people. Other people. Not you, Clyde.' She took a breath. 'Don't you know that I hate you?'

  Silence. The stroking fingers ceased their movement, and abruptly the hands lifted away from her. Sara opened her eyes just a slit. He was watching her. His jaw was tight, his lips set.

  As he met her gaze his face relaxed and the corners of his mouth tilted in a smile that was without humour. 'Seems there's no point in going on. I'll see you in the morning.'

  He was at the door when she called him back. 'I want to go home tonight.'

  'It's very late, Sara. And dark.'

  'The road is good,' she said stubbornly. She shot him a challenging look. 'Don't you understand that I can't stand the thought of spending the night next door to you?'

  If she had thought to discomfit Clyde, she had misjudged him. The gaze she was subjected to was insolent in the extreme, going from her face to her body, lingering on the crumpled gown, on the long legs that were bare where her dress had lifted.

  'I think you'd rather spend it with me.' His eyes gleamed mockingly, the lips parting in a rakish grin. 'It just so happens that I've lost the taste for it. Get packed, Sara. We leave in twenty minutes.'

  Sara took the road to Stellenberg on a day when she knew that there was no risk of meeting Clyde. She had learned that he spent Tuesday afternoons consulting at a children's clinic in a village twenty miles down the coast. By the time he got back to the home, she would already have left. Jenny was not in her usual place beneath the tree. As Sara made her way towards the white-walled building she felt a quiver of dread.

  'Jenny has taken a bad turn,' she was informed by the nurse at the desk.

  'Can't I see her? I won't stay long.'

  'No, Mrs Burod. Dr Montgomery has ordered a ban on visitors.'

  'Is she… is she very ill?'

  'I'm afraid she is,' came the grave response.

  Early next morning, after a night spent almost entirely sleepless, Sara phoned Stellenberg and asked for Clyde. 'How bad is Jenny?' she asked abruptly, coming straight to the point. It was the first time she had talked to him since the midnight drive back from Cape Town.

  'Pretty bad,' he said quietly.

  'Will she be at the concert?'

  'I'm not sure…'

  'See that she's well enough to go.' Sara gripped the phone tightly. 'If she's there, I'll dance.'

  'Sara!' An urgency in his tone. 'You're sure?'

  'Quite sure.'

  'What made you change your mind?'

  'I'd like to give Jenny some happiness.'

  And after all the hours of turmoil and sleeplessness it had been as simple as that, Sara thought, as she put down the phone. Jenny had touched her heart. Besides the fact that the child could be dying nothing else mattered. Not even the knowledge that by dancing Sara's own health could be harmed. What was all-important was that Jenny should experience the one joy she desired above all else.

  Probably her health would not be affected, Sara reflected, as she walked along the beach in the late afternoon. Her collapse had happened a long time ago. She had been pregnant at the time, her body strained by rehearsals. She had been in good health ever since.

  She chose a dance that would not be too demanding, and began to practise that night. At first she was dismayed by her stiffness; limbs that once had performed in response to a kind of conditioned instinct had become clumsy.

  In ten days was the concert. She had enough time to prepare. Each day she practised. As the stiff limbs loosened, she felt an exhilaration that had been missing a long time. Dancing was part of her, part of the very fabric of her being, and until now she had not let herself realise quite how much she had missed it. While she was saddened by Jenny's illness, and while Clyde and a love which refused to fade were never far from her mind, Sara nevertheless experienced a satisfaction which belonged only to her dancing.

  The day before the concert there was a call from Clyde. It was short and to the point. Jenny was a little better, she would be in the audience. Sara waited tensely, hoping for some personal words just for herself, but there were none. Clearly, after the debacle of the night in Cape Town, what interest Clyde had still had in her was now gone.

  She tried to push him from her mind as she decided on a costume. Something dainty, a costume that would bring to life the ballerinas Jenny had seen in pictures. Yet as she looked at herself in the mirror it was hard not to think of Clyde. She had worn a similar costume the first time he had seen her, when he had come to her dressing-room and begun to sweep her off her feet. Would the dress bring back memories? she wondered. Would it remind him of the love they had once shared?

  But she would never know what Clyde felt. For one thing, he would not tell her. For another, she would not be here to listen even if he did.

  Along with the decision to dance in the concert, Sara had made up her mind on something else. She was cutting Clyde out of her life. All along she had hoped that her love for him would fade, but if anything it had grown stronger. But it was a love without a future. Sara's chances of living a normal happy life—something she wanted quite desperately to do—depended on her distancing herself from the man she loved.

  It could be only a matter of time before Andrea rejoined him at Stellenberg, and Sara did not want to be around when she did. Even without Andrea's presence, she knew that she could no longer lay herself open to the possibility of chance meetings. Her nerves were too raw, her emotions too vulnerable.

  She was totally unable to stop her senses leaping whenever she saw Clyde. She was unable to quell the agonising longin
g to be in his arms, the wild desire to have him make love to her. She would always love him. She had known for some time that it was hopeless to expect otherwise. But for her own peace of mind she had to love him from afar.

  Lynn's letter had arrived three days ago. Her mother was better, the cruise was almost at an end, and she was on her way back. She longed to see her Antique Den again, Lynn had written, and hoped that Sara might be willing to entertain the idea of a partnership.

  Had circumstances been different Sara knew that she would have done just that. As it was, she would find something elsewhere. After the concert she would tell Clyde of her decision to leave Morning Glow on Lynn's return. She wondered if the news would interest him even slightly.

  Clyde came to Morning Glow to take Sara to the concert. She had said she would drive her own car, but he insisted. Sara asked him about Jenny.

  Clyde's tone was quiet as he talked, his face grave. Once, when he took his eyes from the road to look at her, Sara saw that they were warm with concern.

  This was how she must remember him, she thought—the man of contrasts, strong and intoxicatingly masculine, and yet kind and dedicated and concerned at the same time. The tight navy cords he wore, and the snug-fitting sweater, seemed to emphasise his look of the outdoors, enhancing his tan, his litheness, the power that was in every line of his body. In the pocket of his sweater was a pair of surgical scissors and a narrow flashlight used to look into ears: he must have examined a patient, then absentmindedly retained his instruments. The doctor and the man of the outdoors, two integral parts of his personality. It seemed symbolic that her last sight of him—for she knew she would not see him again—should be just like this.

  'Your dance will be last,' he told her, changing the subject.

  'Jenny knows?'

  'Yes.' He was smiling, the blue eyes lit with a warmth that sent the adrenalin pumping fast through Sara's system. 'She's a very excited young lady today. The nurses hardly know how to cope with her.'

  'I'm glad,' Sara said simply.

  A hand left the wheel and closed on one of Sara's lying on her lap. She could feel the fingers against her thigh, and her heart thudded hard against her ribcage.

  'You don't know how glad we all are,' Clyde said. 'The excitement seems to have given her something to live for. You'll dance for her again, Sara? After tonight?'

  Sara took a deep breath. 'I'm leaving Morning Glow.'

  There was an urgency in the hand that held hers. 'You're going back to Cape Town?'

  'Perhaps.'

  'You're going to dance professionally again?'

  'I haven't decided what I'll be doing.'

  'So tonight you're playing Lady Bountiful.' All the warmth had left his eyes; his voice was hard. His hand lifted from hers, abruptly, the gesture managing somehow to convey a feeling of distaste.

  Angry words sprang to Sara's lips, but she stifled them before they were uttered. One retort would call forth another, and nothing would be achieved. Concealing the tears that shone in her eyes, she turned her head away. As she pretended to look through her window she wished only that the afternoon was already ended.

  There was time to see Jenny after Sara had changed into her costume and before the concert began. The little girl's face was radiant. She touched the white dress, caressed the soft folds. 'You look so beautiful,' she said rapturously. 'Mrs Burod, I've been so excited ever since Dr Clyde told me you would dance.'

  'I'll be dancing specially for you,' Sara said, and was glad when Jenny was wheeled away. Her emotions were already so charged that the sight of the child's transparency, heightened even more since the last time she had seen her, threatened new tears.

  The concert began. Sara could have joined the audience and watched most of it, but she chose not to. She waited for her call in a tiny room backstage. The last hour had been a drain on her emotions. She felt tense, overwrought. Now was the time to get a grip of herself. She must try not to dwell on Jenny's alarming frailness. Nor must she mourn the fact that her last time together with Clyde had turned sour just when, for once, it had been going so well.

  She was called at last. As she stood in the wings, listening to the opening bars of the music, she hoped that Jenny would recall how they had read the story of Coppelia together, and that she would understand that the dance—the Aurora solo—had been chosen specially for her. She thought also of Clyde. Was he in the audience, and would her dancing mean anything at all to him?

  And then she was dancing, giving herself to the music and the mood. Last week's stiffness was gone, and now there was only lightness, all her movements were fluid, lovely. There was joy in dancing once more, a rare joy that precluded all other emotions.

  The audience was hushed. To no other act had the children given quite such attention. It was as if they sensed that they were watching something special.

  The dance ended and there was a long hush. Then thunderous applause rang out, and cries of 'More, more!' Sara sank down deep in a gesture of appreciation.

  'More! More!' Still the call continued.

  Sara was exhilarated. She was on the stage, and her limbs were keyed with exertion, and all about her there were the smells and sounds that she knew so well. Down below in the audience people had enjoyed her dancing. Jenny was there, the little girl to whom ballet meant so much. And Clyde was there. 'More, more!' sounded the shouts, and Sara could not deny them.

  A signal to the small string orchestra, then she was dancing again. The dance ended, and still the audience wanted more.

  Sara was beginning to feel tired. Just for a moment the doctor's warning of so long ago flashed through her mind. And then she remembered Jenny, and the child's happiness, also the fact that she would not be dancing again after this.

  She moved into the next dance, a lively, spirited one. She was spinning on one point when weakness struck her, and she put out a helpless hand and gave a small cry. She did not even hear the anguished moan of the audience as she collapsed.

  An unfamiliar bed. White walls. A strange room, not her room at Morning Glow. Hands moving over her, strange hands, clinical. And then, as greater consciousness returned, she took in voices—two people talking. One person was Clyde, surely, though the tone was not the hard one she had grown used to. The other was strange and yet familiar too, low, professional. It came to Sara that the voice belonged to Dr Simons; he had attended her the last time she had been ill.

  A door closed, and silence fell. And yet she was not alone. She sensed another presence in the room.

  She wanted to open her eyes, but they felt very heavy. She tried to sit up, and fell back against the pillow. She heard an exclamation very near her, and then a hand was on her shoulders, the other supporting the back of her neck, putting her gently back against the pillow. Clyde's hands… She could not mistake Clyde's hands, even if the gentleness had become unfamiliar. Again she tried to sit up.

  'Lie still, my darling.'

  She was dreaming. She must be dreaming. The only times she had heard Clyde talk in quite this way had been a long time ago, and after that in her dreams. In wakefulness he was hard, angry. Vaguely she remembered driving with him in a car. He had been mocking, had wanted to hurt.

  A hand touched her forehead, played through her hair, pushing it very softly from her face. Lips touched her forehead.

  She was dreaming. And yet she had the strangest feeling that she had to open her eyes. With an effort she did so, only to close them again.

  'Rest, darling.'

  This time her eyes opened all the way. Clyde was in the room, by her bed; she was sure of it. Before her eyes was a blur. She put all her will into making it recede, and gradually it did.

  He was sitting beside her. His eyes were very blue, yet very tired. His hair was rumpled, as if a despairing hand had been thrust through it many times, and his face was taut. Sara thought he had never looked quite so strained. He was wearing clothes that she recognised, navy trousers and a matching sweater. He had worn them on the way to th
e concert.

  The concert… She had been dancing! She jerked up once more. 'I was dancing. Clyde, what happened?'

  'Don't you remember?' His tone was husky, but his eyes were watchful.

  'I… I fell.'

  'You collapsed. Sara, why didn't you tell me?'

  Suddenly she was trembling. A hand reached for one of hers lying on top of the blanket. Clyde turned the hand palm upwards and brought the two clasped hands to lie against her cheek. She could feel the roughness of his skin.

  'Tell you what?' she whispered.

  'You collapsed in Cape Town. During Swan Lake,' he said. 'You were warned not to dance. Dr Simons told me everything.'

  She could only nod.

  'You let me think you didn't care about your career any more. Sara… Sara darling, why didn't you tell me?'

  Darling—that word again. It warmed her, filled her with a wonderful happiness. Which was absurd, for it could mean nothing. Clyde had a wife.

  She swallowed hard. 'At first… I thought you'd have seen it in the papers.'

  'I was out of town at the time, and nobody told me. Don't you think I'd have come to you if I'd known?' His voice was rough. 'Later, at Morning Glow, why didn't you tell me?'

  A small pink tongue came out to wet lips that were dry. 'I didn't want your pity.'

  'Pity!' The word was expelled angrily. 'You've aroused many emotions in me, Sara, but pity has never been one of them.' He paused, and when he went on his tone had quietened. 'I think there's something else that needs explaining. Why did you call off our marriage?'

  Her heart was beating hard against her ribcage. 'You know the reason.'

  'I know what you said at the time. I want the real reason, Sara.'

  She turned her gaze from his face. She had kept the truth from him for so long, it was hard to speak now. As she felt a hand cup her chin, drawing her back to look at him, she trembled.

  'Clyde…'

  'The truth, Sara,' he said firmly.

  The blue eyes held her green ones, steadily, disturbingly, defying them to shift away. Sara had no option but to speak. Slowly, a little shakily at first, she told him of the conversation she had overheard so long ago in the arbour at his parents' home in Cape Town.