"But while they last you feel wretched, a-and it worries me, seeing you in pain."
"You're sweet."
Her lips were tremulous, near his cheek and longing to touch it. "Shall I drive the car home?" she asked. "Please."
She slipped out of her seat and went round to his side, and when they reached the bungalow she saw to it that he took two of his tablets immediately. She brought him a cup of strong dark coffee in bed and sat with him until he fell asleep. Before she turned out the bedside lamp Fern pressed her lips to the cheek she hadn't dared to touch in the car. He gave a rather boyish murmur, as though her kiss winged its way through the veils of his sleep and stirred his youthful memories of being fondly kissed in bed by his mother.
The following morning Ross was feeling a great deal better, but Fern felt like making a fuss of him and she brought him his breakfast in bed. She sat on the bed while he ate his chilled grapefruit and talked about using the little sun-room of the bungalow as his work-
room. Fern enthusiastically agreed with the idea; the sun-room, she said, would be light and pleasant to work in.
The heatwave continued. Ross began work on his new book, shutting himself away for hours in the sun-room with his typewriter, a stack of clean white paper, a telephone off the hook and a well-filled box of his Cuban cheroots.
Fern lived each day as it came and she was happy enough. Diana was often at the bungalow, a lively young chatterbox who was ever ready to talk to Fern about her flourishing romance with Jeff Lane. Diana was young in lots of her ways, but she was very certain that Jeff was the man she wanted to marry. They had already talked of marriage, she told Fern, but right now Jeff was reading for his F.R.C.P. and if he passed he would quit the hospital and go into private practice. They both wanted this. Jeff knew a doctor in Carmel who might take him into partnership and it was a place they both liked.
"I get awful envious when I come here, Fern, and see everything looking so sweet and nice," Diana said, while they sat in the garden of the bungalow one afternoon. "I think most girls are domesticated at heart, don't you?"
"Being in love seems to make light work of it all." Fern lay at ease in her garden chair and listened to the steady tap-tap of Ross's typewriter coming from the sun-room.
"I always had an idea you'd fall for Ross," Diana ventured. "I—I mean, I knew it wasn't just that wretched Jed Evans business that made you marry him."
"It was in a way, Diana," Fern quietly replied. "I couldn't let people say things about Ross that weren't true, and then again a lot of unkind talk would have reflected on all of you. You know how that kind of thing snowballs. People wouldn't have believed Ross was sick with a bad headache and that he spent a perfectly innocent night in my room."
Diana sat frowning into the lily pool, one hand fond-
ling the curly black head of Gigi, her stepmother's French poodle. "Anyway," she said finally, "I'm glad things worked out the way they did. It was Fate, that's what I think."
Fern laughed and gave Gigi a piece of chocolate.
"You might well laugh, my girl, but that's what it was sure enough," Diana gaily asserted. "Here's this delicious girl, Fate said, and this lovely tiger of a man. I'll throw them together and then you'll see the fireworks fly."
Fern was now laughing uncontrollably at Diana's nonsense. She hadn't noticed that Ross's typewriter had ceased to tap, but quite suddenly warm, strong hands held her shoulders and Diana's eyes sparkled with appreciation when Ross bent over his wife and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. .
Fern smiled up at him. "All finished for the day?" she asked.
"Yep!" He stretched himself out lazily on the grass and Gigi stood her front paws on his chest and licked his chin.
Diana was fingering the tortoiseshell clip that held Fern's long hair away from her face. "This is rather nice," she remarked. "May I have a closer look at it?"
"Of course." Fern withdrew it from her hair and handed it to Diana. The diamond-like stones flashed in the sunshine and after a few moments Diana gave a boyish whistle. "Is this a Heatherly family heirloom?" she asked.
"No!" Fern laughingly shook her head. "It's pretty, but it's no heirloom. It was a present, as a matter of fact."
Ross had now grown interested in the clip. He often noticed it in Fern's hair but he had never closely examined it. "Let me have a look, pet," he said to Diana. After about a minute he said to Fern, with a glint of curiosity in his eyes : "Did some grateful patient give you this?"
"N-no." She thought of Curtis Wayne securing her hair in the clip that afternoon on his yacht, and because she really had no need to hide the fact that he had
given her the clip she told Ross that he had been the giver.
"I see !" Ross at once tossed it into her lap, where the stones flamed against her cream-coloured dress. Fern was bewildered by the action; hurt by the faint look of contempt in his eyes.
"I—I didn't see anything wrong in accepting an inexpensive hair-clip from Curtis," she said, defensively.
"My dear girl," Ross's scarred left eyebrow lifted into a caustic arch, "I can't quite believe that you aren't aware that those stones are the genuine article. The clip's worth a packet of money! Ask Diana if you don't believe me. She knows a good bit about jewellery."
Fern looked at Diana, who with some embarrassment agreed with Ross that the clip was studded with real diamonds.
At that moment Ross leapt to his feet and said he'd take Gigi for a walk. He avoided Fern's eyes as he walked to the door that opened out of the garden on to the avenue, Gigi leaping eagerly about his sandalled heels. The sharp closing of the door made Fern jump.
"Curtis is an idiot!" Diana said explosively.
"I wish I'd never met him!" Fern could have wept. Curtis and his gift had made a stranger again of the husband who had drawn so much closer to her in the past few weeks.
Ross made no more mention of the hair-clip, that night or in the days that followed. He was suddenly so unapproachable that Fern found herself unable to even tell him that she returned the clip to Curtis accompanied by a stiff little note in which she told him she couldn't possibly keep such an expensive gift and that he should have been frank with her about its value. As she signed herself Fern Kingdom her pen wobbled and her new surname bore a look that was very much in keeping with her insecure hold upon the name.
Curtis tactfully accepted the returned gift, but that was by no means the end of the business. It had thrust a wedge of distrust between Fern and her husband, and they had not the advantage of being able to bridge any
rifts in their relationship with the kisses of a real marriage. Fern tried to ignore the rift, to win back the contentment of those first weeks at the bungalow, but it seemed to grow wider every day... to gape before her each time she looked into Ross's unsmiling eyes. She realized that though he didn't love her he had thought her without the mercenary streak that was in Laraine. It was a virtue which had assumed proportions beyond any other for him, and now he was expected to believe that a playboy like Curtis Wayne gave diamonds to a woman in return for just her friendship.
And Fern ached as though beaten that he should doubt her.
In the company of other people they put up a good front. Jenifer returned from Paris accompanied by Laraine, and at the country club one evening Fern underwent in silence the exquisite torture of watching Ross dance with Laraine, stunning this particular evening in a clinging dark red creation that turned her into a sumptuous tulip.
Jenifer fitted a cigarette into a meerschaum holder and watched Fern shoot another covert glance at Ross, with Laraine in her red gown held against his white tuxedo. "Aunt Winna tells me you both had a marvellous time in New York," Jenifer said, applying a light to her cigarette.
"Yes, marvellous." Fern took a sip at her drink, tensing in her chair as the music ceased and Ross and Laraine walked to the long club bar, where they seated themselves upon stools.
"Ross has scads of friends in New York, so I suppose you enjoyed a real socia
l whirl?" "Jenifer puffed out cigarette smoke and wished young Fern would relax. First she was fidgeting with her cocktail glass, then the ashtray, now she was twisting that gorgeous solitaire sapphire round and round her finger. Marriage had changed her. She had been such a composed little thing at one time, now she was as tensed up as a starlet awaiting the result of a screen test.. . and rather thinner.
"What are you afraid of, Fern?" Jenifer demanded, point-blank.
Fern caught her breath, then she realized that she could speak frankly; that she didn't have to consider Jenifer's more hardened feelings as she considered Diana's. "The obvious, Jenifer," she replied. "Ross didn't marry me because he loves me."
"You're darn pretty, Fern," Jenifer spoke firmly, "and you have an advantage over Laraine—oh yes, I know it's Larry you're afraid of—you live with Ross and he's a man. Propinquity, your looks and gentleness, could combine to compel his love."
"But I don't happen to believe that love can be compelled." Fern's colour had risen and she found it impossible to admit even to Ross's open-minded sister that he had never made love to her.
"Look, sweetie," Jenifer flicked ash somewhere in the direction of the tray; she was extremely short-sighted and wasn't at the moment wearing her dramatic tilt-ended spectacles, "I don't often talk about my own marriage to people, but it wasn't all that happy until the last year of my husband's life. He was a lot older than me and he'd been around, lived it up, known scads of real beauties. I never felt sure of him. I showed this. I acted awful mean and jealous at times, then it began to filter through my crazy brain that there could have been only one reason why Graham married me. I wasn't beautiful. I could act, but I hadn't the kind of talent that earns Oscars. I had a bit of money, whereas Gray had gilt-edged securities stacked in the bank. Gray had married me because it was something he wanted to do; and after I faced up to that realization, why, our last year together was one long honeymoon. It was a lifetime lived in twelve short months." Jenifer smiled, her brown eyes looking suddenly soft. Then she briskly added : "Ross married you, Fern. You may be wrong about his reason for doing so."
That conversation with Jenifer did hearten Fern for a day or so, then a wedding gift from Laraine arrived at the bungalow, and Fern could hardly bear to look at
Ross after she had opened the box and uncovered a real silk bedspread with a four-tier fringe.
Ross gave a brief humourless laugh and flicked a finger at the fringe of the bedspread. "Larry always had a sense of humour," he drawled, and Fern bit her lip as he strolled off to the sun-room. She waited to hear the tap-tap of his typewriter, but only silence and the aromatic smoke of a cheroot drifted out to her. She at once visualized him stretched out on one of the long chairs with which the room was furnished, watching the curling smoke of his cheroot with brooding eyes, memories of his youthful love for Laraine eating at his heart.
Fern refolded the silk bedspread and put the box in the cupboard where all their other wedding gifts were stored. Now, more than ever, did Fern feel herself unable to use any of the lovely things which people had sent them. The blue-green Sevres china from Ross's aunt. The ornamental wine flagons from Dr. Lands. Jenifer's silver coffee-set. A wonderful pair of antique candlesticks from the Brunhills which Fern often longed to use on her dining-table of an evening, for the stems of the candlesticks were female figures, holding graceful draperies with their hands. Then there was an exquisite porcelain bowl from Diana and Jeff, shaped like an open water-lily and set in a porcelain leaf-dish, the pearl-white of the bowl blending perfectly with the pale green of the dish. Enchanting, dainty things which every bride longs to possess, but Fern never used them.
One Saturday around noon Diana phoned the bungalow to ask if Fern and Ross felt like going on a picnic with Jeff and herself. Ross had gone into Hollywood to lunch with a magazine editor, but Diana said this needn't stop Fern from joining the picnic. "Phooey, of course Jeff won't prefer to have me all to himself," Diana laughed. "He's been on emergency night duty for the past two weeks and this picnic is really an excuse of mine to get him into the fresh air. You and I, along with Gigi, can go for a stroll over the hills while lover-boy catches up on his beauty sleep. He's bound to go to sleep in the sun, and the poor pet works so hard at
that darn hospital that I haven't the heart to scold him."
Fern couldn't help admitting to herself that an afternoon in the hills would make a nice change, so she thanked Diana for the invitation and said she'd get ready.
While she waited for Diana and Jeff to pick her up in his sports car she wrote a note for Ross explaining about the picnic and then changed her flowered housecoat for tapered slacks and a sun-top. She secured her hair with a piece of ribbon and when Jeff sounded the horn of his car she ran out to her friends, banging the bungalow door behind her as though she was heartily glad to escape from the place for a while. Gigi welcomed her into the bucket-seat of the car with a bark and then they were off with a roar.
They ate their picnic where the broom and heather grew wild and high. Delilah had packed tiny boned chickens, enormous tomatoes, Pastrami sandwiches, pickled cucumbers and several cans of light beer. The beer had grown warm in the sun and they scrambled down the hillside to a stream overhung by some tattered warriors of willows and cooled the cans in the running water. After they had eaten Jeff did exactly what Diana had surmised he would do, he stretched himself out in the warm grass and fell fast asleep.
Diana leant over him and watched his boyish, sleeping face. "You funny old thing," she murmured. "You're all freckles and ears and a wild desire to make people well when they fall sick ... and I'm nuts about you."
Fern lay on her back, gazing up at the radiant summer sky, and she wanted to be Diana. Secure in the warm cocoon of Jeff's uncomplicated devotion and able to voice her love in such simple-hearted terms. Diana cast a quick side-glance at Fern and bit her lip. She knew Fern wasn't happy any more; that Ross harboured a grudge against her over that darn hair-clip, and because her own feelings for Jeff were rapidly maturing her she knew right now that there was anguish in Fern ... she didn't guess the extent of the anguish, which was making Fern wonder how long she could go on living
at the bungalow, with Ross behaving like a polite
stranger.
The situation was all the more unbearable because Fern was not a cold person. She was made for marriage and longed for a cordial relationship, in all senses, with the man she was so deeply in love with. That spark of hope in her heart was flickering alarmingly in the cold wind of his recent reserve and should it go out Fern knew she would leave him. She would return to England and he could then obtain a quiet divorce and forget all about her.
"Would you like to go for a walk?" Diana asked, after they had rested in the grass for a while.
"Yes, why not!" Fern sprang to her feet and she and Diana went bounding off into the tall heather with Gigi chasing after them. Soon they breasted a hill that overlooked a lush valley where there were vegetable crops of every kind. Water from huge sprays sparkled in the sunshine like diamonds, and a field worker waved his wide-brimmed hat when he saw the two slender figures silhouetted against the sky upon the hilltop. Diana waved back, and then she swung round with a startled little cry as Gigi, nosing about behind a clump of rocks, emitted a sudden agonized yelp and streaked out from the rocks. It was Fern who saw the long, spotted snake gliding away into the grass, spitefully hissing.
"The poodle's been bitten !" she gasped, and the markings of the snake told her it was a poisonous one.
Fern went in pursuit of the terrified animal, while Diana made for the spot where they had left Jeff asleep. It was a good quarter of an hour before they found Gigi shivering and whimpering in the heather, already affected by the poison in her system. Jeff held her beneath his arm and she whined with pain as he cut away the snake-bite with his pocket knife. Then he bound up the bleeding leg with his handkerchief, and though they drove at top speed all the way downtown, the poodle died in Fern's arms before they could re
ach a vet.
Twilight had settled down over the bungalow when
Ross drove his Mercury into the garage. He then made his way indoors, switched on a couple of lamps and saw Fern's note propped up against an ornament on the mantelpiece. After reading the note he walked over to the cocktail-bar and poured himself a tankard of beer from the small keg that lay on its side on the counter. He drained the tankard gratefully, standing between the open glass doors into the garden.
It was a sultry evening and the pungent odour of the eucalyptus trees mingled strongly with that of the scarlet geraniums and dim gold tassels of the wistaria.
Fern was rather late getting home from that picnic, he thought. He crossed to the bar and put his empty tankard on the counter, then deciding to take a shower he walked into his bedroom. He was unbuttoning his shirt when he heard a muffled little sound in Fern's room. He opened her door and the beam of light from his room slanted across her bed and revealed her stretched across the counterpane weeping as though her heart had broken.
"My dear!" Ross was across the room in two strides and the next moment Fern was cradled against his chest and he was worriedly asking her what was wrong.
She couldn't tell him. She had been crying for a long while, about the poodle and about her own unhappiness, and she couldn't speak coherently. He laid her back on the bed and hurried out to the lounge where he poured neat brandy into a glass. He returned hastily to Fern and held her in the circle of his arm while he made her drink every drop of the brandy. Then, shivering and listless, with her face against him, she told him about the poodle. "Gigi just closed her eyes and died ... I-I've seen people die like that, a-and it's so terribly final," she whispered.
Ross stroked her tumbled hair, and her body seemed frighteningly fragile in his arms; she felt broken, and he half perceived that his own cold attitude of the past couple of weeks had helped to make Fern this miserable. What he didn't fully perceive was that it wasn't just kindness and tolerance she wanted from him.
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