Man of Stone

by Frances Roding

  And Luke did not love her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ALL THE ARRANGEMENTS were made. Her grandmother would go into hospital late Thursday afternoon, and the operation would be performed on Friday.

  Luke had originally planned to fly out to Australia on Monday, but he had delayed his flight for a further fortnight—another sign of how much he cared for her grandmother, Sara realised. Although he didn’t show it outwardly, she knew that he was just as worried as she was about the outcome of the operation. She was beginning to learn to read him now, and she knew that the tight hardness around his mouth could denote pain as well as anger.

  He was a man who was more used to hiding his feelings than showing them, perhaps because of his early upbringing. She knew only the bare bones of the story of how he had been orphaned very young and brought up in a series of institutions. So much more, then, must he miss the woman he loved. There had been so much loss and pain in his life, it was perhaps not surprising that he should treat people with suspicion. No doubt he had contrasted her apparently callous disregard for the relationship with her grandparents with his own lack of loving relatives, and this had increased his dislike of her.

  She knew that she was looking for excuses to explain away his animosity because it mattered to her so much that she should find a rational explanation for it; and that it shouldn’t be based purely and simply on an antipathy towards her as a person.

  She had caught him watching her more and more recently, as though something about her puzzled him. She knew that her behaviour was not what he might have expected from the person he thought she was. It was not that she had deliberately set out to change his mind, it was just that a caring attitude towards others came so naturally to her, that it was part and parcel of her life.

  The close rapport between Tom and herself was something she had always treasured, and she had seen Luke watching them with something closely approaching pain in his eyes whenever she hugged or kissed the little boy. It was a look of loss, and something else she couldn’t define, and she wondered if he was mentally comparing his own sterile childhood with the love she lavished on Tom. If so, she could well understand his pain. She had experienced it herself at one time. There could be nothing more hurtful to a child than to know that it is not properly loved, because a child reacts purely to instinct and cannot analyse why the love of a parent should be withheld. A child sees that lack of love as a lack in itself, rather than in its parent, and that child grows up always under the cloud of knowing that it has not measured up to its parent’s desired image of it.

  Such knowledge can never be totally forgotten, as Sara knew to her own cost, and she had been determined, from the very first moment she saw her father’s reaction to Tom’s illness, that Tom would not grow up under that burden.

  He had always been a physically responsive child and she had been equally loving toward him. She did not believe in the adage that to kiss and cuddle a boy destroyed his masculinity.

  She wanted desperately to have Luke’s child, although she knew that was impossible. Luke had warned her that he would never allow her to do so, and she had no intention of subjecting any child of her own to the agony of being unwanted.

  On Wednesday night, she went upstairs to check on Tom and say goodnight to him.

  Luke was already in his room. The two of them were talking. Luke was very gentle with the little boy, displaying a side of his nature that she suspected she would never know. He was equally tender with her grandmother, and it said much for him, Sara thought, that such a strong, inviolate man should willingly reveal this inner tenderness.

  She started to open the door and then stopped as she saw that Luke was sitting on Tom’s bed, the little boy curled into the crook of his arm.

  Tears stung her eyes. She had not seen Luke displaying physical affection for Tom before, and the sight moved her almost unbearably. Tom was looking up at him with such trust and love. Without knowing it, Tom was giving to Luke the trust he had never been able to give his own father.

  ‘But what if you and Sara have babies?’ Sara heard him asking anxiously. ‘Will you still take me fishing?’

  ‘Sara and I won’t be having any children, Tom, but even if we did, I promise you I’d still take you fishing…’

  Quietly, Sara stepped back into the hallway. Neither of them had seen her, and she wished now she had not eavesdropped.

  Luke had meant every word he said when he told her that he would not allow her to have his child. She had thought that slowly, imperceptibly almost, the barriers between them were lowering, but now she realised she had been living in a world of fantasy, imbuing his actions, the odd looks he occasionally gave her, with a meaning they did not possess.

  She had thought that he was slowly recognising that he had misjudged her; she had even allowed herself to hope that, although he could never love her, he might at least come to respect her, but now she saw that she had been imagining things.

  He had married her for her grandmother’s sake, and he would stay with her for the same reason. So, he had made love to her a couple of times. She forced herself to face the truth. Physical arousal for a man did not have to be accompanied by love. On the first occasion he had been determined to teach her a lesson, and on the second… She swallowed hard. She had… she had begged him to make love to her, and he had done so. Although he had never referred to it, she suspected that he regretted that brief lapse. No doubt, in his mind, his physical involvement with her, however slight, tainted and contaminated the love he had shared with his first wife.

  When he came out of Tom’s bedroom, she was still standing there. He stopped abruptly, obviously surprised to see her. He was frowning, she realised drearily. He always seemed to be frowning when he looked at her. No doubt wishing her a thousand miles away, and out of his life altogether.

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No.’ Her denial was immediate and harsh, but to her surprise he didn’t leave her; instead he took hold of her arm and gently pulled her out of earshot of Tom’s bedroom.

  ‘I know what a strain all this must be for you. I can’t understand why you deliberately ignored all your grandparents’ previous overtures to you, I must admit, but neither can I doubt the strength of your love for your grandmother now. That couldn’t be faked. Sara, there’s no shame in worrying about someone you love. The moment I mention Alice, you stiffen up and spit at me like an angry cat. What is it that frightens you so much?’

  Her eyes, shadowed and vulnerable, gave her away, as her glance skittered away from his.

  ‘You’re frightened of me?’

  ‘Is that so surprising?’ she asked him honestly, managing to find her voice. ‘You’ve made your contempt of me plain enough, Luke. Is it so odd that I shouldn’t want to give you a further opportunity to condemn me?’

  ‘For loving your grandmother?’ His incredulity couldn’t be faked. ‘Sara…’

  ‘Luke… telephone.’

  Anna was standing at the bottom of the stairs. Luke hesitated, as though reluctant to let her go, and Sara resolved the situation by pulling away from him.

  She was too vulnerable to him, she recognised bleakly, too much in love with him to be able to protect herself from him. One hard look from him and she was ready to dissolve with pain. One small smile and her whole day grew bright.

  She went to bed early, but she couldn’t sleep. She was still awake when Luke came to bed, and she lay there with her eyes closed, listening to the familiar sounds of his bedtime preparations. He always showered before coming to bed, and against her closed eyelids danced erotic images of him… too erotic for comfort, she acknowledged, turning on to her stomach and trying to suppress the hot quiver inside her.

  He walked back into the bedroom and her stomach somersaulted as she saw that he was naked. Normally, he wore pyjama bottoms. Or had he simply worn them for her benefit, or rather to reinforce his rejection of any intimacy between them?

  She couldn’t draw her fascinated gaze aw
ay from his body. He was everything she had ever imagined a man could be, and then some more. She ached to reach out and touch him. Heat shimmered through her veins.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  He stopped beside the bed, looking down at her. She realised that she had been staring at him, and flushed hotly.

  ‘Nothing.’ Her voice quavered slightly.

  He pulled back the covers, and she protested impulsively, ‘Your pyjamas…’

  ‘I don’t like wearing them,’ he told her coolly. ‘And, besides, what’s the point? You’ve seen all of me there is to see. And anyway…’ he paused as he snapped off his bedside light and then slid down the bed ‘… when you curl up against me in your sleep, I prefer the feel of your skin against mine without any barriers.’

  Sara swallowed, unable to believe her ears. When she curled up against him? Did she? And what did he mean about liking the feel of her skin against his?

  ‘That being the case,’ he added urbanely, reaching for her, ‘I think we can dispense with this, don’t you?’

  She couldn’t move as he stripped off her nightdress and pulled her into his arms.

  ‘No, don’t push me away, Sara,’ he murmured against her mouth, teasing it with biting little kisses. ‘I’m frightened, too. I love your grandmother, too. In London, you asked me to make love to you… Now it’s my turn to ask you. I need someone tonight, Sara, so please don’t deny me.’

  ‘Someone.’ He needed someone. She went cold inside, and he felt her withdrawal, and reacted immediately to it, releasing her and saying quietly, ‘I see. I suppose I should have guessed. The leopard never does really change its spots, does it?’

  ‘Luke, I…’

  Her throat was thick with tears, raw with the salt taste of them. How could she tell him that it was being reduced to just a ‘someone’, the pain of not being wanted for herself that had turned her body to ice beneath his hands? She had no words to tell him without betraying the truth—that she loved him, and that it was as a woman who loved him that she wanted to give herself to him. Not just as a willing body, not just an implement via which he could expend his sexual hunger.

  ‘Forget it,’ he told her tersely, turning his back on her. ‘It wasn’t that important, anyway.’

  Not to him, Sara acknowledged miserably, because she herself wasn’t important to him.

  Both of them went with her grandmother to the hospital and saw her comfortably installed in her private room.

  She was to be given a sleeping pill that night, and the sister in charge explained that it would not really be advisable for them to see her until after the operation.

  ‘When… when can we see her?’ Sara asked, dry-mouthed, as she and Luke left the room.

  ‘Well, the operation should be over by lunch time. You can ring then, and I suggest that you don’t come in to see her until the evening. By that time, she should be feeling a little better. Until then, she’ll be too heavily under the influence of her drugs to be aware that you’re here, and older ladies, like your grandmother, hate anyone seeing them at less than their best, don’t they?’ she finished tactfully.

  She was right, Sara acknowledged. Her grandmother always looked so pin-neat and elegant that she wouldn’t want them to see her with her hair uncombed and lipstick off. Trivial though these details were, in view of the seriousness of her condition, they would still be important to her grandmother, Sara recognised. She had agonised over what nightgowns to take and what bedjackets, and she had insisted on Anna packing her favourite lilac-based toilet water.

  They were on their way back, driving down a narrow country road, when a cyclist suddenly shot out of a drive right in front of them.

  Luke braked sharply, scraping the wing of the car against a wicked-looking thorn hedge, but the child, shocked by the near accident, couldn’t control the bicycle and fell off in front of them.

  Sara was out of the car first, with Luke immediately behind her. He bent down to lift up the child, and Sara said abruptly, ‘No, don’t touch him. He might have broken something.’

  She touched his arms and legs experimentally, watching in relief as the dazed look in his eyes gave way to realisation of what had happened. He sat up unaided, his face almost green.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I think so.’

  His jeans were torn at the knee, and he was bleeding. Dirt from the road was embedded in the lacerated flesh.

  ‘I’ve got a first-aid box in the car,’ Luke announced, reading her mind. ‘Can you…’

  ‘It’s only a scratch. We’ll soon have it cleaned up.’ Her reassurance was more for the child than Luke, but to her surprise a look of gratitude darkened his eyes as he turned to go back to the car.

  The first-aid box was well stocked, and in no time at all Sara had cut the jeans away from the wound and cleaned it up. As she had suspected, although it had been bleeding copiously, it was not very deep. The boy winced as she applied the antiseptic, but Sara had had enough dealings with small boys and bruised knees to know that the pain was not serious. Tom, for all his delicate health, was as mischievous and accident-prone as any other child, and she had never molly-coddled him, no matter what Cressy and her father had said.

  ‘Do you live locally?’ she asked him matter-of-factly, when she had checked gently once again for any major breaks.

  ‘Yes. Here,’ he told them, jerking his head in the direction of the drive he had emerged from.

  ‘Luke, could you pick him up?’ Sara asked without looking at her husband. ‘He hasn’t broken anything, but the shock…I’ll take his bike, and go on ahead to warn his mother. If you arrive carrying him, she’s bound to think the worst.’

  ‘I don’t have a mother. My parents are divorced.’

  The truculent statement was underlined with a certain defensive defiance that Sara recognised instantly. Children suffered so much from the break-up of their parents’ marriages, and were so sensitive about it. Many, many of them blamed themselves; their guilt intensified by their inability to truly understand adult emotions.

  ‘Is there someone at home to look after you?’ Sara asked him, frowning slightly.

  ‘Not at the moment. We have a housekeeper, but she’s away on holiday, and Dad had to go and see my gran. She’s not very well. He won’t be back until later.’

  Impulsively, Sara turned to Luke. ‘I think we should take him home with us. We could leave a note for his father. He’s all right, but he could be shocked…’ Although she didn’t want to say it, her heart was touched by the angry defiance she sensed in the boy. He had pride, she recognised, but he badly needed someone to take care of him right now, and the natural vein of empathy for anything hurt and vulnerable that was so much part of her character would not allow her to leave him on his own in an empty house.

  Luke was frowning, and she felt sure he was going to refuse. When he spoke, his voice was so clipped that she knew he was furious, but all he said was, ‘Very well. There’s some paper in the car. You write the note. I’ll settle him on the back seat.’

  It didn’t take long. The car, despite a few ugly scratches, had nothing fundamentally wrong with it. The bike was stowed away safely in an outhouse, and they were back on the road within ten minutes.

  As Luke drove, Sara questioned their passenger gently, but learned little more than his name. Instinct made her respect his need for privacy, and so she allowed him his silence and talked instead to Luke, filling the silence with gentle conversation that demanded little other than the occasional response.

  Tom was openly delighted to have the companionship of another boy, no matter how briefly. They were very much of an age, although Ian was taller and heavier, and it made Sara realise how much her brother’s asthma was already holding him back. She only hoped that the specialists were right when they predicted that he could grow out of it.

  It was Anna’s night off, so Sara made supper. Luke came into the kitchen while she was preparing it.

  ‘I’m sorry about la
nding you with Ian,’ she apologised uncomfortably. ‘I realise you didn’t want to bring him back with us, but we couldn’t have left him alone in that house.’

  ‘What makes you think I didn’t want to bring him back?’ Luke asked her quietly.

  She looked at him. ‘Well, you were frowning… In fact, you looked furious.’

  ‘Furious?’ He laughed, a harsh, odd sound. ‘My God, jealous, more like. Is that what you really think, that I was angry?’

  He shook his head and then walked out of the kitchen, leaving her staring after him in bewilderment.

  Ian’s father arrived half-way through the evening, full of apologies and concern. His thanks to her were almost too effusive, and Sara felt slightly embarrassed. She had done nothing out of the ordinary, after all, and she noticed that Luke was frowning again and, more, that he seemed to almost actively dislike Ian’s father, who, apart from his effusiveness, was a very pleasant-looking man in his mid-thirties, with fair hair and a rather nice smile.

  ‘We mustn’t lose touch,’ he announced just before he left. ‘The boys seem to get on so well that…’

  ‘My wife already has enough to do without adopting any more strays,’ Luke interrupted brutally.

  Sara stared at him, thankful that neither Tom nor Ian were close enough to overhear his words. Alan Jessop looked embarrassed, as well he might, and left them in some disorder.

  Sara waited until they were alone before she turned on Luke and demanded angrily, ‘What on earth did you say that for? The poor man was so embarrassed.’

  ‘I was just letting him know that there wasn’t any point in looking in your direction for a foster mother for his son,’ Luke told her curtly. ‘God,’ he added savagely, ‘what is it about you? Do you want to mother the whole of creation, is that it?’

  He made it almost sound like a crime.

  ‘I felt sorry for him,’ she explained uncomfortably.

  ‘Who?’ Luke shot back. ‘The boy or his father?’