A Different Kind of Love

by Jean Saunders

  He was tempted to go brashly into the tall house while she was out at work and demand to see his kid, since presumably somebody there was looking after it. He even toyed with the idea of kidnapping, but quickly forgot that, since it was an encumbrance he didn’t want. And his old woman would be none too pleased at seeing another woman’s brat, either, Walter thought feelingly.

  So he had decided against storming the house, and waited until he could confront Kate on her own. His chance came when he saw her leave the house early one evening, walking towards the posting box with a letter in her hand, and then going towards the local park.

  “Hello, Kate.”

  She heard the voice, and for a split second refused to believe it was the voice she detested most in all the world. She turned very slowly and her heart beat sickeningly, knowing very well who she was about to see. It confirmed what had been nagging away at her lately, when she’d been eerily convinced that someone was watching her. It also confirmed what she had always known – that for every sin, there had to be a reckoning.

  But for the moment her mouth dried completely, and she couldn’t speak as she looked into the bold eyes and fleshy mouth of her one-time lover. Walter was as nattily turned out as ever, his hair slicked back to a glossy sheen. As he smiled arrogantly, the feeling of hatred in her soul for him shocked Kate to the core.

  She stepped back clumsily, almost stumbling, and Walter’s hand shot out to steady her.

  “Don’t you dare touch me, you bastard,” she said venomously, shaking him off.

  His eyes widened a little at the unexpected expletive. Coming from quiet little unassuming Kate, it was quite something. But there was nothing quiet and unassuming about her now.

  “Well, well, it’s easy to see you’ve come out of your shell since the last time we met,” he said, sneering to cover his feeling of surprise. “Is this new air of confidence to do with the new boyfriend with the swanky Bentley, or the new successful artist’s model you’ve become? I suppose it’ll be nude pictures next. And to think you played the innocent with me for so long, darling.”

  Kate felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. How the devil did he come to know so much about her? And how dare he demean the work she and Luke did so successfully? Her eyes filled with furious tears, and she blinked them quickly away.

  “You’re scum, Walter, and you always were. How my brother ever befriended you I’ll never know. I wish to God I’d never set eyes on you.”

  “But you did, darling, and we both know it was more than just our eyes that got together, don’t we? So where is the little brat?”

  Kate stared at him, not understanding, and after a moment his hand shot out to grip her cruelly around her wrist, making her gasp with the pain of it.

  “Or are you going to deny me access to my own kid, on account of I never sent you any money for its upkeep? Let’s see, it must be three or four months old now, by my reckoning, and I must say you’ve still managed to keep that luscious shape of yours, Katie girl. I still have a taste for it…”

  “Keep away from me, you bastard!” Kate screamed as his face came nearer to hers, and the meaning of what he was saying dawned on her.

  There was no time to think. All she wanted was to get him away from her, and she said the first words that came into her head, just to be rid of him.

  “There’s no baby. There never was, at least not by the time you were supposed to marry me.”

  The second she had spoken, she clapped her free hand to her mouth, seeing the murderous look in his eyes. His face was almost purple with rage.

  “Are you telling me, you bitch, that you tried to get me to marry you under false pretences?”

  Kate gave a hysterical laugh. “Well, that’s bloody rich, coming from you! You led me on, and you were the one ready to commit bigamy, and you didn’t even have the guts to tell me to my face about the wife at home.”

  She screamed again as he struck her on the side of her head. Her senses spun, and for a few moments she was totally disorientated. He shook her until her teeth rattled. She wished desperately that someone would come and end this terror, but it seemed now as if the park was deserted except for themselves.

  “And what if I’d gone through with the bloody wedding?” he shouted. “Then I’d have been in real trouble, wouldn’t I? I told you at the time it was best for all concerned if I simply disappeared.”

  “It’s a pity you didn’t do that before you ruined me,” Kate sobbed, stiff with the pain in her cheek, wondering how many of her teeth had been loosened by his rough handling.

  “Aye, perhaps it is,” he sneered. “All right, so there’s no kid. Whether or not there ever was one is beside the point now. So what happened to the money I left you? Did you do as I said and go to Bournemouth and find some other sap who was taken in by those innocent blue eyes and all your play-acting? You certainly fooled me, bitch.”

  She stared at him. He was unbelievable. But he wasn’t going to deprive her of all her dignity. She lifted her chin and stared him out.

  “Yes, I went to Bournemouth, and I enjoyed it, too,” she almost spat at him. “I put your nasty little letter in the fire where it belonged, and I spent all your money on having a bloody good time.”

  She shrieked as he grabbed her to him, his eyes hardening. He pushed her back towards the bushes, and she was more frightened than she had ever been in her life. This was not the sweet-talking seducer of women she had once known, but a potential rapist.

  “Walter, for God’s sake, don’t do this.”

  “Don’t do what? Take my pleasures the way I used to do, sweetness? I’d almost forgotten what it was like to fornicate with you, but by God, I intend to revive my memory now.”

  He pushed her towards the bushes, and it was only because they were so thickly meshed that she managed to stop herself falling flat on her back. Once she did that, she knew she would be at his mercy. So, still on her feet and before she gave it a second thought, Kate drew back her arm and clenched her fist, and then rammed it with all her might into his crotch.

  “You stinking whore!” he gasped, bent double and clutching himself. His eyes filled with tears of pain. “I’ll have you for this!”

  “You’ll be lucky to do anything with that thing for a while yet,” she shouted. “Don’t you ever come near me again, Walter Radcliffe. If you do, I’ll have the law on you.”

  Somehow, while he was still cursing her and nursing his tender, throbbing parts, she twisted away from him. She ran as fast as she could, out of the park and along the road, sobbing and gasping, brushing past the few passers-by who tried to stop her and ask what was wrong.

  She couldn’t face anyone. She couldn’t let Mrs Wood see that she was so upset, and she certainly didn’t want Doris and Faye interrogating her. And the last person she could bear to see right now was Luke.

  She walked the streets for what seemed like hours, until it grew dusk and darkness fell, and only then did she return to Jubilee Terrace. She called out goodnight to anyone who might be in the parlour, and went straight up to her room. She made herself a hot strong cup of tea on her little gas ring, lacing it with brandy to counteract the shock, and drank it down without ever noticing how it scalded her mouth.

  In minutes, Walter had brought back all the horror of the past to the surface. It was never going to go away. He had shamed her for ever, and if she ever thought she could keep it hidden away indefinitely, she knew differently now. She sobbed long into the night.

  She hardly slept. Her nerves were so ragged that she jumped at the merest sound of traffic outside the house, and the alarm made her heart pound so fast she thought she was going to die.

  Maybe it would be better if she did die, she thought, at her lowest ebb. She had thought so before, when Walter deserted her, and everything had seemed so hopeless, but she had overcome it all. She had met Luke, and because of him she had come to London and taken the first step in making a new life for herself and re-establishing her self-esteem.

>   Because of Luke, she had found the kind of modest success she had never even dreamed about. And because of him, she knew how desperately she had never wanted to see or hear of Walter ever again. Luke would totally despise her if he knew her past history, and she couldn’t bear to see that dawning look in his eyes when he knew she was little more than a slut. She didn’t hide from the word. It was what everyone in Edgemoor would have called her, if they had known the truth. Small communities didn’t take kindly to one of their number playing fast and loose with travelling men. She condemned herself more with every thought, as if it would help to cleanse her soul.

  “Kate, have you got a bar of soap I can borrow?” she heard Doris’s voice say, followed by the hammering on her door. “I know Pollard’s have given you some samples, and I’ve just run out, so I have.”

  Kate wasn’t even out of bed, but irritably she flung off the bedcovers and called to the girl to come in while she fetched the soap from the box the company had given her. Doris and Faye had mocked that it was a pity she hadn’t been given a complimentary sample from Wesley’s motors instead.

  “Here you are. I don’t want it back,” she said, handing Doris the bar of soap, knowing she would never have intended replacing it anyway.

  “Merciful Mother of God, what’s been happening to you?” Doris exclaimed.

  “What do you mean?” Kate snapped.

  “Take a look in the mirror, for the Lord’s sake, and don’t tell me you’re after forgetting how you got that shiner! It was never Lukey that did such a terrible thing, was it?”

  Kate rushed across to the mirror.

  Her face still felt so stiff with crying and tormenting herself, that she had completely overlooked the real reason for it. Looking at herself, her heart jumped. One side of her face was swollen and distorted where Walter had struck her, and all the skin around her left eye was a fine mixture of reds and purples. There was a cut on her lower lip, and now she moved her jaw a litle more carefully, she felt how tender it was. But not as tender as Walter’s nether regions, she hoped savagely.

  “What happened?” Doris said, flopping down on Kate’s bed as if she had no intention of moving until she heard it all, her concern mixed with avid curiosity. “Did you and Luke have a fight? Was he trying it on after all? I never really thought he was that kind, but a bloke’s a bloke—”

  “It wasn’t Luke,” Kate snapped. “Don’t be so daft, nor always so quick to jump to conclusions, Doris.”

  “Well, don’t try telling me you fell against a door, me darlin’, because we can all recognise the lies behind that one. Somebody hit you, and hit you bloody hard, by the looks of it. Have you reported it to the police?”

  The last thing Kate wanted to do was report any of it to the police, or to have Walter investigated. Her vivid imagination soared wildly, Vi being dragged up as a character witness, and hearing the woman being scared into revealing far too much. It would be the worst humiliation of all, especially if it all came out, about being seduced by Walter, and the miscarriage, and the almost bigamous marriage, and her own deceit in not telling him there wasn’t going to be a baby after all. When it was all boiled down, she didn’t know which of them was worse.

  “I haven’t reported it to the police, because I’ve got no idea who it was,” she invented quickly as Doris impatiently waited for information. “Somebody jumped out on me in the park and knocked me out, and the next thing I knew I came round and it was dark.”

  “Did he tamper with you? You know! Down there.” She nodded to Kate’s lower regions. “You’d be feeling bloody sore if he did, Kate, and I reckon you should get yourself off to see a doctor because you might have caught something. You never know with tramps or fly-by-nights.”

  Kate swallowed. The girl was only trying to help, but unwittingly she had said something Vi would surely have latched onto. She could pretend it had been an appalling attack, and she’d been the victim of an unknown rapist … But she couldn’t add more lies to all the others. Anyway, what doctor was going to look at her and say she had just been interfered with? There would be physical evidence of such a thing … her mind veered away from the distasteful thought. Even more so, from the indignity and shame of being examined by a stranger.

  “Nothing like that happened, Doris,” she said huskily, “I know I’m still the same as before.”

  “Well, you’d better have some witch hazel for your face,” Doris said practically, clearly disappointed that there was no juicier piece of gossip to pass on. “I know Ma Wood’s got some, so I’ll fetch it for you. There’s not much point in going to work today with a face like that, is there? Lukey won’t want to be taking pictures of it, unless it was for the coppers’ identity files.”

  She giggled at her own joke, and before Kate could protest that cold water would be good enough to reduce the swelling on her face, she was gone to fetch the witch hazel. As expected, when she came back, Faye and Mrs Wood were with her, exclaiming in horror at the state of Kate’s face.

  “You’ll definitely not go to work today, my dear,” Mrs Wood declared at once. “Your mother would never forgive me if I didn’t do my duty by you and insist that you stay in bed.”

  “I’m not ill, Mrs Wood, and Luke will be expecting me.”

  “Don’t you worry none about that. Thomas can go down there and tell him what’s happened. I’m sure he can manage without you for one day, and you wouldn’t be able to pose for your soap pictures now, would you?”

  “We’ve done all we were commissioned to do for the present.”

  “Well then, that’s that. Now, you just dab your poor face with this magic stuff and get yourself back into bed, and I’ll bring some breakfast up to you.”

  “Honestly, it’s not necessary!”

  But she was weakening. Mrs Wood was acting like a mother hen, shooing the curious girls out of the room and taking care of her. And she needed so much to be taken care of right now. All her carefully built-up confidence had been shattered in one brief meeting with Walter. And if she had ever believed in fate, she believed in it now. Fate was paying her back.

  “She’s been what?” Luke almost shouted, as Thomas delivered his message at the studio, and looked around him with interest, and he thought it a pity he’d never had more professional photos done for posterity.

  “Now calm down, my dear sir, she’s not badly hurt,” Thomas said, putting on his best soothing face. “The poor little lady was attacked while out walking last night, and suffered some swelling to her face and a bruiser of an eye. But it’s nothing that won’t heal of its own accord.”

  “But who did it? Does she know? And more to the point, has she done anything about it?” In his agitation, Luke grabbed Thomas’s lapels, and the man shook him off carefully.

  “I gather she had no idea who attacked her, and nor does she want any fuss. She was most adamant about it. All she wants is to be left alone to recover, and she begs you to forgive her absence here today.”

  Luke looked at him as if he was demented. “For God’s sake, man, do you think I care about that if Kate’s hurt?” he snapped. “I’ll cancel all today’s sittings, and go to her at once.”

  “I’m sorry, my boy, but she doesn’t want that. She sent you a note, explaining.”

  He handed it over, and Luke ripped open the envelope. Kate’s usual neat, square handwriting was less than tidy today, and he guessed the note had been hastily written.

  Please Luke, give me a few days to be alone. You wouldn’t want to see me now, anyway, with my face such a sight. But I’m all right, really, and Mrs Wood is taking good care of me. Please don’t cancel anything on my acount.

  She had signed it, and Luke’s mouth tightened as he saw how it was scrawled, as if even that had been too much of an effort. But she knew him too well, anticipating that he’d close the studio for her.

  “Is she really going to be all right?” he said at last.

  “Of course she will. It was a nasty shock, I guarantee, but you have to understand h
ow she feels, wanting to hide herself away for a while, just like a wounded animal would. Let her have some dignity, Luke.”

  After a minute Luke nodded slowly, and drew out some money from his wallet. If time was what Kate needed, it was what she must have.

  “There’s a flower seller at the end of the street, Thomas. Will you buy the biggest bunch of red roses you can find and take them to her for me with my love?”

  “Gladly, dear boy.”

  Luke watched him go. He’d far rather be taking the roses to Kate himself. But he knew, as well as she did, that there was a busy schedule today. A titled lady and her children were to have their portraits done, and it would have been awkward, to say the least, to have cancelled it. He would have done so, though, even if he risked losing the commission.

  New propositions were coming his way all the time, and many of them he simply discarded. But there were others that needed a lot more consideration. He’d been going to talk to Kate about them when the right opportunity arose, but now certainly wasn’t the time. She would be feeling as fragile and vulnerable as she had been when he first met her a year ago.

  He cursed the unknown attacker for destroying all the self-confidence he had seen grow in her over the months. She had always been a stunningly pretty girl, but lately she had grown into a lovely, sophisticated woman, while still managing to retain her air of innocence. A look that was enhanced by that provocative smile which had wound itself around his heart for so long.

  And the year since he met her was up. He’d held off all this time, when his dearest wish was to make her his wife. He wasn’t prepared to wait much longer. He had all the natural urges of a virile, red-blooded young man – and he simply wouldn’t think about what to do if Kate finally refused him.

  There was only one thing he was sure about – if she ever gave him that ultimatum, then he couldn’t go on seeing her day after day. Their relationship had to be resolved, one way or another. He was her friend, and glad to be so, but this assault on her only made him more sure that what he wanted most out of life was to be her protector, her husband and her lover.