Whispers Through the Pines

by Lynne Wilding

  She should call Marcus.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Marcus stood back from the easel to get a better look at the fourth face. Timothy Cavanagh, with his typical English complexion, fair skin, rosy cheeks and his youthfulness, was so different from the other three that he seemed out of place in the painting. Now, he realised as he studied the painting as a whole, Sarah’s rogues gallery was complete, and they all had been in the 58th Regiment, as the records had shown. Jessica had done a good job with her portrayal of the youthful soldier, he thought, capturing an air of meekness about him, and a lack of character and personality.

  His features unusually sombre, he glanced towards the kitchen, where he could hear Jessica making them coffees. There’s something different about her. The moment she opened the front door to him, he had sensed it. It wasn’t that she was depressed, it wasn’t even an aloofness, it was more like a preoccupation, as if weighty matters were making her appear slightly remote. And it wasn’t hard to divine what was occupying her mind. Simon. He’d talked to Simon yesterday about Jessica’s psychological situation and had been taken aback by the man’s blatant lack of interest. It was as if he didn’t care any more whether his wife was going around the twist or whether she had progressed to a relatively normal state, which was Marcus’ professional opinion. Simon’s behaviour was a far cry from the anxious position he’d taken when he had first asked Marcus to assess Jessica.

  Marcus was astute enough to be aware of a shift in the Pearces’ relationship, too; he’d been getting the vibes for weeks, but that it had occurred in such a short space of time was nothing less than amazing. No doubt Sarah’s interference had been a catalyst to drive a wedge between them, but he was too sophisticated to think that Sarah was the sole source of their discontent…he believed it went back further than that. As well, he couldn’t dismiss the Sue Levinski factor. Somehow, knowing her track record, he believed she’d schemed her way into Simon’s affections and that could mean trouble of the worst kind for the doctor.

  Jessica handed him his coffee. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think it’s very good,’ he grinned as he sipped the coffee, ‘the painting, I mean. It’s incredible how you captured the soldier’s features so well, just after seeing him in one dream.’

  ‘Well, the dream was pretty graphic. Without Timothy to distract Sarah, the others might have had a hard time trying to abduct her, so I suspect his features made a lasting impression on my subconscious.’

  ‘Has Simon seen the fourth face?’

  ‘No,’ she replied diffidently, ‘I did it after he’d gone to work.’

  Marcus took a deep breath and plunged in with the question, ‘Do you want to talk about you and Simon?’

  Jessica turned away from him, pretending to fiddle with some art supplies on the table which stood next to the easel. Oh, God, it would be a relief to talk her problems through with someone, but not Marcus, even though she knew he was a good listener. Her problem was that they had become too close and, she knew, that the feelings she had for him lurking deep within her, weren’t ready to come to the surface, to be exposed, yet.

  ‘I am, or was, a psychologist, you know. That’s what psychologists do. Listen to people’s problems, counsel them, that sort of thing,’ he said, his tone unusually serious instead of being light-hearted.

  She gave him a brief smile and then shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. Not yet.’

  ‘Well,’ he murmured with a nonchalant shrug, as he tried to disguise the unaccountable wave of hurt that imploded within him because she didn’t trust him to the nth degree with her problems, ‘when you’re ready then.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Deeming it wise to change the subject, Marcus said, ‘I suppose that now, with the last face finished, Sarah will be around again soon. Her story’s drawing to a climax, and I think we both have a fair idea what may have occurred.’

  ‘We need to know what happened to Timothy. I suspect something did.’

  ‘I’ll get Billy Lane to check if there’s anything in the Norfolk Island records in Sydney.’

  They were still talking on the verandah when Simon came in and joined them. He seemed surprised to see Marcus, and then he saw the painting. ‘Bloody hell, another rotten face.’ He glanced accusingly at Jessica. ‘When did this happen, and why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I painted it myself, this morning, after you’d left for work.’

  ‘I see. You painted it!’ His gaze narrowed first on Marcus, then Jessica. Interesting! No, astonishing, her admitting she’d painted the fourth face, but not the others. Why? He was silent for maybe half a minute, pondering over that, until curiosity got the better of him. ‘So, Jessica, who is he? And how did you know what type of face to paint?’

  ‘It’s Timothy Cavanagh,’ Marcus supplied the answer. ‘Jessica had a dream…’

  ‘Shit. Another bloody dream.’ Simon stared pointedly at his wife. ‘I told you to keep taking the medications, didn’t I?’

  ‘You’ve told me lots of things, Simon, some of them worth doing, some not,’ she replied in a clipped, almost formal tone.

  Marcus eyebrows lifted, then settled at Jessica’s tone. Here, he thought, was a woman to be reckoned with when the occasion arose. He had never heard her speak so coldly to Simon, a sure sign that troubles abounded in the Pearce marriage. A strategic retreat might be a wise move.

  ‘I’d better be off, Nan wants me to pick up a few things before the supermarket closes.’

  ‘Thanks for dropping by, Marcus. We’ll talk again soon,’ Jessica said with a smile, as she walked with him to the front door.

  ‘Yes, bye, Marcus,’ Simon called offhandedly. He was still staring at the painting, which he’d come to believe to be the source of all his problems. If he hadn’t brought her to Norfolk, if the first face hadn’t been painted in, if Jessica hadn’t begun to have those nightmarish dreams, if Sarah, damn her, hadn’t invaded their lives, then they’d still be a happy couple. But now, all the bloody ‘ifs’ in the world couldn’t change what had happened. Why him, he moaned? Why, when he almost had everything he wanted in life, had fate chosen to shortchange him? He heard Jessica return to the verandah and turned round to look at her.

  ‘You’re home early,’ she said, as she picked up the coffee mugs.

  ‘Yes. Uumm, two retired Sydney doctors called into the hospital today. They’re here for a wretched bowls competition or something. I gave them a tour of the hospital and they asked me out to dinner. I’ve just come home to shower and change.’

  His use of the word me instead of us was not lost on Jessica as she regarded him dispassionately. A small part of her brain, the suspicious part, wondered if he were telling her the truth. Then she asked herself, did she really care? No. They were both only going through the motions, and it was time they did something about it.

  ‘They’re not with their wives, so I thought you’d be bored if you came along,’ Simon explained, before she had the chance to query him.

  ‘I see. After your shower, I think we should talk.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Us.’

  Jessica looked pointedly at her watch. What could he be doing in the bathroom that was taking an eternity? Delaying the inevitable, she decided with a grim smile. Partly to amuse herself, she mentally recited the oft-quoted lines from Alice in Wonderland: The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things…

  Eventually he appeared, dressed in casual black trousers and a faun knitted sports shirt, courtesy of one of the Taylors Road’s men’s stores.

  She watched him go to the buffet, where they kept an assortment of spirits on a silver tray. He had always needed fortification of some kind when an unpleasant task was in the offing, she recalled. Poor Simon. She retained enough compassion to feel sorry for the man he had become. Greedy, grasping, almost desperate to make a success of himself and to have people notice it. Being the best doctor he could be wasn’t enough for him any more. Some component in h
is personality, ego perhaps, needed more. She idly wondered what a psychiatrist would make of that.

  ‘Want anything?’ he asked. When she shook her head, he poured whisky into a glass and then sat in a chair opposite the sofa where she was sitting.

  ‘So, what are we going to talk about?’ he began with mock cheerfulness.

  ‘I think you know. In one word: divorce.’

  His eyebrows rose and he jerked forward in the seat with surprise. ‘Christ, what are you talking about? Divorce. Bloody ridiculous.’ He shot her a glance and then looked away guiltily. ‘I thought we’d put the unpleasantness, I mean, Sue, you know, behind us.’

  ‘Stop kidding yourself, Simon. We’re not a couple any more. We’ve become two separate people who inhabit the same house, and that’s just about all.’

  ‘And whose fault is that? You don’t want me to touch you, you shrink away every time I come near you.’

  ‘You’re right.’ She looked him squarely in the eyes, so he wouldn’t mistake her message. ‘I can’t bear for you to touch me. It’s gone. Everything. I don’t love you any more, and I choose not to live the lie of us being a happily married couple when we’re not.’ She took a breath, glanced at his shocked expression and then continued, ‘If you were honest with yourself, you’d admit it, too. You’re not in love with me any more than I am with you. All we have together now is years of familiarity, of living as a couple for more than ten years.’ She flicked a strand of hair off her forehead and reflected for a moment or two. ‘I don’t know how or when, but something happened to us along the way. It started a long time ago, and slowly, without us noticing, the loving, the caring just died.’

  ‘You really are crazy,’ he said, his cheeks flushing with anger and no small amount of desperation. He had to convince her otherwise, that there was a chance for them to be happy again, even though he knew Jessica’s stubborn streak well, and knew that when she made a decision, even God or an A-bomb blast would not sway her from it.

  ‘We’ve been through a bad patch. First Damian, now…this blasted Sarah thing. All marriages go through rough times, you’ve said that often enough in the course of your legal work. We need time, Jess, time. When my contract on Norfolk is up, and we’ve only another two months now, we’ll take a nice holiday. Overseas. To some exotic place and rekindle what we’ve lost.’

  She shook her head, aware of a terrible emptiness inside her. She’d had no idea how hard it would be to talk to him, to end it, and was finding it incredibly upsetting to do so. ‘Simon, our feelings aren’t lost, like a parcel at the post office. They’re dead.’

  ‘No…’ He gulped the remainder of his whisky and set the glass down on the coffee table with a bang. ‘I don’t accept that.’

  ‘Sometimes, accepting that a marriage has run its race is hard. But I think we both need to be adult enough to do it and end things cleanly.’

  He sat there morosely trying to conjure up a valid argument, but the only idea that came to him was to blame someone else. ‘It’s Sue, isn’t it? If she weren’t around, there’d be a chance, wouldn’t there?’

  ‘It isn’t Sue,’ she refuted. ‘Our problems started long before Sue, but we didn’t see them or we just refused to. When you got that geriatrics complex idea in your head, you changed.’

  ‘Oh,’ his jaw thrust out aggressively, ‘So it’s my fault because I wanted to set us up for life, is it? That’s bloody stupid and unfair. You know it is.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, it’s not my fault, either. We both have to share the blame.’

  ‘Oh, fine. That’s damn magnanimous of you. You can walk out of the marriage a wealthy woman, can’t you, while I…’

  She frowned, suddenly aware of where the real problem in this conversation and its outcome lay. Money. Dear God. Of course. That’s what it had always been. Money. ‘While you what? What, Simon?’ When he didn’t speak, she prodded, ‘Come on, get it out on the table, now.’

  ‘You’ve never had to worry about money. First, your father provided for you, gave you everything you and Alison ever wanted. Then, after his death, he left both of you damned wealthy. Your share portfolio is worth a bundle now, Jessica. Close to two million, I reckon. But me, I’ve had to work my guts out to get what I got. My parents left me nothing. The farm had to be sold up after Mum died, just to pay the bills. I worked my way through a university degree, and the FRACS in London. I lived off the smell of the proverbial oily rag back then. As well, later on, taking years to build up a practice back home…’

  ‘Which you’ve done very well,’ she conceded. ‘You’re a highly respected specialist in Perth, and I know what your annual income is, so don’t tell me you’re poor now. I won’t buy that.’

  ‘But, my project would make me a multimillionaire, Jess—set me, I mean us, up for life.’

  She kept her features composed, not letting her disappointment in him show. ‘I wish you every success with it, Simon, I really do, but I don’t want to be a part of it.’

  ‘Damn you, you know I can’t do it without the use of your funds. I don’t have enough collateral of my own.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s what holding on to the marriage is about. Not me, not us, not our memories of Damian, but the project and the money. That’s it, isn’t it?’

  He had the grace to look shamefaced, and his gaze couldn’t hold hers for more than a second or two. ‘I’ve worked hard,’ he whined. ‘I deserve my success and, if we break up now, you’ll be denying me it.’

  Sadness wrapped itself around Jessica’s heart and squeezed until she could hardly breathe. Now they were getting to the bottom line. She’d learned during her working life that in most divorce settlements, money, property and who got the kids made achieving equitable settlements hell. The thought came to her that she could give him part of her share portfolio, she didn’t need all that money. But then she remembered how hard her father had worked to acquire the basics of it and knew it would be morally wrong to do so. Besides, what had Simon done to deserve that money?…not nearly enough.

  ‘Look, I’m sure we can work something out,’ she said to placate him. ‘What we need to agree to here and now is that the marriage is over, that we intend to go our separate ways.’

  ‘If you want your freedom, it’ll cost you. I want the money, all of it!’ He declared emphatically, his jaw jutting out with barely suppressed anger. ‘God knows, with what I’ve put up with since Damian’s death, I reckon I deserve it.’

  Jessica winced visibly. That was hitting below the belt, bringing her breakdown into it. And…it was the worst statement he could have made, for it tempered her stubbornness to hardened steel. ‘I think not.’ There was quiet determination in her tone as she stared back at him.

  ‘You think not,’ he mimicked nastily. ‘So sure of yourself, aren’t you? Well, I’ve already had legal advice, and my representative says I’d have a fifty-fifty chance of getting at least half.’

  ‘Is that so?’ She smiled then, deliberately, confidently. ‘You do remember what I used to do for a living, don’t you?’

  He simply stared at her, waiting for her to speak.

  ‘Well, in truth you may be able to get almost half—that’s not beyond the realms of possibility—but if you try, I’ll tangle you up in court for so many years that by the time you get what you consider to be your share, you’ll be able to take up residence in a geriatric centre yourself instead of building one.’ Of course, her words were a bluff, but she hoped he wouldn’t realise it.

  ‘You wouldn’t.’

  Her blue eyes had the glint of battle lines drawn. ‘Try me.’

  ‘You bitch.’ He jerked up out of the chair, then thrust his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘What with all the funny goings-on around here, I could have you declared mentally incompetent and get control of everything. Did you know that?’

  It took every ounce of self-control not to let her shock show. ‘You could try.’ That he had even contemplated such a move told her in no uncertain terms that the mar
riage was truly dead. And, remembering what she’d been through on Norfolk, she knew, even though the possibility was remote, that he might swing such a judgement…But he’d have to do so without Marcus’ corroboration, she was sure of that.

  She gave a long sigh and looked away. ‘Simon, I believe we’ve reached an impasse, and I think you should go. I’ve told you what I want, a divorce. I’ll talk to Max tomorrow, so he can draw up the separation papers. I think it best if you move out, as soon as possible.’

  ‘Just like that,’ he sneered at her, his frustration showing in the downward turn of his mouth, the hostility of his gaze. ‘People will talk, you know. Norfolk’s a small place. Everyone seems to know what everyone else is doing.’

  ‘True, but as you said, your contract finishes in two months, so you won’t have to put up with the gossip for long.’

  Throwing her a malicious stare which he hoped would intimidate her, he picked up his car keys and moved to the front door. ‘This isn’t finished, Jessica, not by a long shot.’

  After he’d gone, she sat quietly for a long time, thinking about his parting shot, his threats. She knew that she might have got him out of her heart, but he was not out of her life, yet.

  ‘You poor love.’ Sue wrapped her arms around Simon as he collapsed on the lounge beside her.

  ‘Yes, it wasn’t very pleasant. Jessica can be a tough customer when she wants to be.’ He allowed himself to be soothed and petted until he was in a better mood. ‘I think we both said things we’ll regret later on.’

  ‘No matter, the deed’s done. I think this calls for champagne,’ she said, and jumped up and went to the fridge. In less than a minute, two champagne flutes were brimful of the bubbly liquid.