Lesson to Learn

by Penny Jordan

  She did as much as she could, casually mentioning his father during their conversations, making it so that it was as though Gray was very much a part of Robbie’s life, even if Robbie himself stubbornly refused to admit him into it.

  Today was her birthday, and tonight Sally and Ross were taking her out for a meal. There had been cards on the breakfast table at the cottage for her this morning and both Sally and Ross had got up especially early to be there with her while she opened them.

  When she left she contrasted the warmth of affection that existed within her own family with the loneliness of Robbie’s family life. Her parents had sent her a card and a long loving letter; there were cards from her brother and his family in Canada, from cousins and aunts and uncles, from old school and university friends now scattered all over the country and Europe in different jobs; and this evening she had the treat of being taken out to dinner at a very special and expensive local restaurant to look forward to.

  At the weekend, when she had not worked, as Gray had been at home to look after Robbie himself, Sally had dragged her off to their nearest town, where she had insisted on buying her a new dress, despite Sarah’s protest that it was far too expensive.

  ‘I’m being well paid for this latest commission,’ Sally had told her, adding with a grin, ‘Besides, it makes me feel less guilty about my own extravagance. What do you think Ross will think of this?’ she had asked Sarah, parading for her inspection in an extremely slinky black jersey dress with tiny shoe-string straps.

  ‘I think if you wear it when we go out for my birthday he’ll be wishing me a million miles away by the time we go home,’ Sarah had told her frankly.

  It had worried her at first, that her presence might become an irritation to her cousin’s husband, causing friction between husband and wife, but, as Sally had assured her, Ross was far too easygoing a husband for that kind of thing. ‘Besides,’ she had added with one of her familiar grins, ‘the internal walls of the cottage are a couple of feet thick, and you know yourself how impossible it is even to hear the phone ring from one room to another, so if Ross wants to make mad, passionate love to me…’She had broken off to laugh at the expression on Sarah’s face, teasing her, ‘I’d forgotten how easily embarrassed you are. Besides, from what I’ve heard, having adults sharing your roof with you is nothing. It’s once you’ve got children running around and bursting into your bedroom at precisely the wrong moment that you really begin to understand frustration.’

  This time both of them laughed.

  * * *

  AFTER HER weekend away from him Robbie was tending to cling to her, wanting constant reassurance that she was not going to go away, wanting plenty of cuddles and confirmation of her physical affection for him. He was a very loving little boy, although, from what Sarah could gather from his comments about his mother and the life he had lived with his grandmother, his mother had never been particularly loving towards him.

  Sarah had noticed how worried he was about touching her with sticky fingers, and how he sometimes tensed a little as though half expecting her rejection. His mother, she had learned from his innocent chatter, had had long pink nails and always worn high-heeled shoes. Perhaps unfairly, Sarah acknowledged, she was beginning to get the impression that Gray’s ex-wife had been far from the devoted mother she had pretended to be…a woman who had preferred to leave her son in his grandmother’s charge, so that she was free to live the life of a single woman.

  Reminding herself that life could be extremely difficult for single parents, who should never be expected to devote every single second of their lives to their children, Sarah tried hard not to pass judgement on Robbie’s mother.

  One thing the woman most definitely had done, though, was to instil in Robbie a very definite fear and rejection of his father. Sarah only had to mention Gray’s name for Robbie to tense, screwing up his face, although he had for the first time on Friday evening, when Gray had been late, commented to her, ‘I’m glad that Daddy’s working late because it means that you’ll stay with me for longer, doesn’t it?’

  It was the first time he had referred to Gray as ‘Daddy’, and gave Sarah hope that she might in time help him to overcome his antipathy towards his father.

  This morning Gray had told her that he intended to come home early, and so she had not, as she had originally intended, told him that because she was going out to dinner she would need to leave on time at six, but it was now a quarter-past six and there was no sign of him, and when she had rung the factory there had not been anyone there to answer the telephone.

  Now, gnawing her bottom lip, she looked at the clock and decided that she would hang on until seven before ringing Sally to warn her that she might not be able to make it in time.

  In the end it was ten-past seven when she eventually picked up the receiver to dial her cousin’s number.

  Sally answered the phone straight away.

  ‘Oh, no!’ she exclaimed when Sarah told her that Gray wasn’t back. ‘Didn’t you explain to him this morning that we were going out?’

  ‘No,’Sarah admitted. ‘He said he would be back early. I’ve tried the factory and there’s no reply, and, of course, I can’t leave Robbie on his own.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Sally agreed. ‘The table’s booked for half-eight…and I doubt if we can get them to change it. The restaurant is very popular.’

  ‘Look, if I can’t get back in time there’s no reason why you and Ross shouldn’t go by yourselves,’ Sarah told her.

  ‘Sarah, this is your birthday treat,’ Sally reminded her. ‘Oh, drat the man! What does he think you are? To not even have the courtesy to ring you and let you know…’

  ‘He’s normally very good about that,’ Sarah found herself defending Gray. ‘Look, I’ll give it to half-past seven, and if he isn’t back by then I’ll ring you and let you know.’

  Half-past seven. Robbie’s bedtime arrived without any sign of Gray. Sighing to herself, Sarah rang her cousin. Sally was very forthright, and rather angry about the situation, but accepted that Sarah had no option other than to stay with Robbie.

  ‘I hope you let Gray know how unfair he’s being,’ Sally told her, assuring Sarah that she and Ross would go on ahead without her so that the evening wasn’t completely wasted. ‘Although it seems very unfair, since it was your birthday we were supposed to be celebrating.’

  Having soothed her cousin, Sarah turned to find Robbie standing a few feet away from her, his face puckered with anxiety.

  It hurt her so much that he should be so afraid…so vulnerable…so aware of how very unreliable adult promises, adult love could be. She picked him up wordlessly, hugging him to reassure him, and then said cheerfully, ‘Come on, Robbie, bath-time.’

  ‘May I have a piece of cake for supper?’ he asked her, his frown turning to smiles.

  Sarah shook her head. She and Robbie had spent the morning making a birthday cake which they had eaten with due ceremony at teatime.

  ‘No cake at bedtime, Robbie,’ she reminded him. ‘How about a lovely crisp apple instead?’

  Solemnly he nodded his head. He was such a biddable, obedient child…too biddable and quiet at times, she reflected, watching him.

  Of course, the fact that he had been brought up in his grandmother’s household was probably partially responsible for that, and there was, after all, nothing wrong with good, old-fashioned manners, but in Robbie’s case a little more exuberance, a little less tension and apprehension, would make it far easier for him to adjust when the time came for him to start his new school. Sarah was afraid that the robust company of other children of his own age might prove too overwhelming for him and send him right back into his shell. She had already been making enquiries to ascertain if there were any out-of-school activities he could take part in which would enable him to meet other children of his age, and this week she was taking him swimming at a time when she had found out that other children were likely to be at the local sports centre.

  By eig
ht o’clock Robbie was bathed and in bed. Sarah read him his favourite story before he went to sleep. She had noticed that whenever he was stressed or upset he tended to fall back on the security of needing the familiar to comfort him. Slowly she was trying to widen his horizons, to help him become less apprehensive and insecure, but it would be a long, slow process…something that could not be accomplished quickly. Something which might do more harm than good when the time eventually came for her to leave him. Would he see her then as yet another adult who was deserting him?

  Sighing to herself, Sarah went back downstairs, taking his dirty clothes with her to put them in the washing-machine.

  Since she had no option but to await Gray’s return home, she might as well find something useful with which to occupy her time.

  In the kitchen, the buddleia she and Robbie had picked from the garden provided a rich splash of colour on the pine table, even though the flowers were beginning to fall already. Robbie had a surprisingly well-developed eye for a child so young and had produced a very passable drawing of the flowers. She had pinned it to the notice-board she had put up in the kitchen, again with Robbie’s help, although she had asked Gray’s permission first before doing so. He had raised his eyebrows a little but had made no comment other than, ‘Well, if you think it’s necessary.’

  Not necessary, perhaps, but useful. Every teatime she and Robbie made a list of all the things they had done and all the things they wanted to do, and both lists were duly pinned up on the board. Robbie could read quite well, but his maths was poor. and Sarah was trying to improve it by getting him to add up both lists every day, subtracting one total from the other, turning the learning exercise into a game which both of them enjoyed.

  At ten o’clock, just as she was finishing the last of the ironing, she heard Gray’s car, and saw the security lights come on as he walked towards the house.

  He came straight into the kitchen via the back door instead of using the front door. It had been a warm day, the atmosphere a little heavy, and outside the summer evening air was still warm.

  Gray had removed his jacket and his tie. The top buttons of his shirt were unfastened, his skin looked slightly damp, and there was a dark growth of beard along his jaw.

  He was, Sarah saw, frowning, and the kitchen light revealed taut lines of tension beside his eyes and alongside his mouth.

  As always the sight of him reactivated all the aching awareness she fought so hard to control when he wasn’t there. He smelled faintly of heat and sweat, and the knowledge that he was so male and human was like a powerful kick in her stomach, a wrenching, agonising tide of reaction that made her tense every muscle in her body.

  His frown deepened as he saw what she was doing, as though for some reason such domestic intimacy displeased him.

  ‘Robbie asleep?’ he asked her as he put down his briefcase and pulled out one of the kitchen chairs, dropping wearily into it.

  ‘Yes,’ Sarah confirmed.

  ‘I won’t go up and disturb him, then.’

  Sarah compressed her lips. If it was hard getting Robbie to see his father as someone he could love and grow close to then it was almost equally hard getting Gray to acknowledge his responsibility to give Robbie the encouragement and affection he needed to be able to overthrow his antipathy towards him.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m so late,’ Gray was apologising. ‘A crisis blew up with one of our suppliers. I had to go to London to get it sorted out. I told Mary to ring and let you know I’d be back around eight, I know, but unfortunately things took longer than I’d anticipated.’

  Mary was his secretary, a woman in her late thirties. It was pointless now telling him that not only had she not received his message, but also that she had had other plans for the evening.

  Since she had finished the ironing and there was no reason for her to stay, she picked up her handbag from the dresser, checking that she had got her car keys.

  As she headed for the door she heard Gray opening the fridge door behind her.

  ‘What’s this?’ he demanded, removing what was left of the birthday cake. At Robbie’s insistence she had iced on it the message ‘Happy Birthday, Sarah’.

  ‘It’s a cake,’ she told him stiffly, feeling somehow vulnerable and defensive.

  ‘So today is your birthday.’ He was looking at her in an oddly speculative way that made her flush without knowing why she should do so. ‘I should have thought a woman of your age would have had far more exciting plans for celebrating such an occasion than eating home-made birthday cake with a six-year-old.’

  The cynical tone of his voice and the way his mouth twisted combined to fuel her own resentment and pain.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I should have been going out to dinner,’ she told him angrily. ‘However, since I neither had your message from Mary, nor felt able to leave Robbie on his own, and since you had assured me this morning that you would be back early—’

  ‘You had a date?’

  Why did he make it sound such an impossibility? Did he realise how insulting…how unkind he was being? Not for anything now would she tell him that her date had been with her cousin and her husband. Instead she told him stiffly, ‘Yes, I did.’

  She waited for him to apologise…to tell her that he was sorry if he had spoilt her evening, but instead he said cynically, ‘Well, no doubt by keeping him dangling you’ll have made him even keener for your company. Isn’t that how the female mind works?’

  Sarah glared at him, her love for him overwhelmed by anger at what he was implying.

  ‘I can’t speak for other women,’ she told him acidly. ‘But mine most certainly does not, and now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll say goodnight.’

  She was still fuming when she reached the cottage, all in darkness because Sally and Ross had gone out without her. In the sitting-room her cards were lined up on the mantelpiece and the window-sill, a reminder of how happily she had started the day. Damn Gray Philips…just because his wife had been the sort of woman who enjoyed manipulating and hurting people there was no need for him to accuse her…She stopped herself. She was taking things far too personally…far, far too personally…becoming far too emotionally involved, not just with Robbie but with Gray himself as well, while he barely knew she existed.

  Tiredly she went upstairs and prepared for bed.

  * * *

  ‘SO YOU TOLD HIM just how annoyed you were, then?’ Sally was demanding.

  ‘Sort of,’ Sarah agreed, unwilling to explain just what had happened.

  ‘You mustn’t let him take advantage of your kind heart, you know, Sarah. You’re employed to take charge of Robbie, not to act as a surrogate mother.’

  Sarah sighed. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she told her cousin. ‘Otherwise I’m going to be late.’

  There was nothing unusual in the sight of Gray’s car parked outside when she arrived at the house half an hour later, although it was odd to walk into the kitchen to find it empty and the lights left on.

  A plate with a cold and unappetising piece of half-eaten pizza on it was on the kitchen table with a half-drunk mug of coffee.

  Frowning, Sarah opened the door from the kitchen into the hall.

  Silence. For a moment she wasn’t sure what she ought to do. She felt rather like someone boarding the abandoned Mary Celeste must have felt, she reflected as she hesitated. The sensible thing to do was to go upstairs and find out if Robbie was still in bed, but she hadn’t forgotten the way Gray had looked at her when he had thought she was rifling through his desk, and, besides, if he had overslept, as seemed the case…

  The thought of accidentally confronting him, perhaps half naked as he emerged from his bedroom or bathroom—

  Stop it, she warned herself firmly, ignoring her emotional vulnerability and heading for the stairs.

  She was an employee…paid to take charge of Robbie…and that was what she must do. If Gray had overslept…Well, she could always send Robbie in to wake up his father, she told herself as she reached the landin
g and opened the door into Robbie’s room.

  The curtains were still drawn. There was no sign of Robbie, but she could hear water running in his bathroom, though it wasn’t that that held her rooted to the floor just inside the doorway. No, it was the sight of Gray himself, lying sprawled on Robbie’s bed, still fully dressed and fast asleep.

  As she stared at him Robbie emerged from his bathroom, semi-dressed.

  ‘I had a bad dream,’ he told her in a whisper. ‘Daddy came upstairs. He said that I wasn’t to be afraid because he was there.’

  At any other time Sarah would have rejoiced in the natural, easy way Robbie had called Gray ‘Daddy’, in the way he seemed to accept that when Gray said ‘don’t be afraid’, there was nothing to fear…just as she would have rejoiced in the fact that Gray had heard his son cry out and had responded to that cry.

  ‘I’m hungry, Sarah. I want my breakfast,’ she heard Robbie saying as he opened the bedroom door and headed for the stairs.

  She was just about to call him back so that she could get him to wake Gray up when Gray himself moved, turning over, frowning in his sleep as he tried to make himself comfortable in the too small bed.