by Cooper Jilly
‘You can move in with me.’
The room reeled. For a moment all I could think of was the blissful sanctity of Finn taking care of me.
‘Oh, Finn,’ I said, the tears welling up in my eyes, ‘I’d drive you round the twist.’
‘I wouldn’t think so. We can always try.’
‘But what about the baby?’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘It’s Rory’s,’ I said, taking a slug of my brandy and nearly choking. ‘You’d hate that, you’d keep seeing all the things you hate about Rory in its character. And your reputation on the island would be absolutely ruined — your worst enemy’s wife shacking up with you, and pregnant to boot.’
‘My reputation can take it,’ said Finn.
‘Is it because you want to score off Rory by taking me away from him?’ I blurted out.
It was a terrible thing to say. Rory would have certainly hit me for it, but Finn merely looked at me consideringly.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I thought about that for a long time last night, after I’d dropped you off. Of course there’s an element of truth. I don’t have any compunction about taking you away from Rory. I know he’s made you miserable and unhappy. But even if you were married to my best friend, I don’t think it would make any difference. I’d still want you. It’s one of the unattractive things about loving someone — one just suspends all moral values.’ Then his face softened. ‘But there are an awful lot of attractive things about it. Come here.’
‘No,’ I said desperately. ‘Please, no.’
He held out his hands. ‘Why not? I want you.’
‘It’s very noble of you to make the offer, but I couldn’t.’
‘Noble! What the hell are you talking about?’
‘I know why you’re asking me. It’s from motives of altruism. Marina’s your sister and you feel guilty about the way she and Rory have fouled up my life.’
Finn drained his glass. ‘Emily, will you please stop talking nonsense! I’m the least altruistic person alive. Apart from being a doctor, I never do anything to please anyone except myself.’
‘You took me sailing yesterday…’
‘Look,’ said Finn, ‘I took you sailing yesterday because I thought you needed a break. Now I realize I’ve wanted you since the first moment I saw you — pulling up my roses with your teeth — in a black see-through nightie.’
‘Oh,’ I felt myself blushing furiously. ‘How kind of you to put it like that.’
‘And you don’t believe a word of it?’
‘No, you’d never have asked me to move in with you if I hadn’t been pregnant.’ I searched feverishly for a tissue and mopped my eyes.
‘Of course I wouldn’t,’ said Finn. ‘I’d have taken it more slowly.’
‘There’s absolutely no point in shacking up with someone one hardly knows, who one’s not in love with,’ I said shakily. That stopped him.
‘I suppose not,’ he said grimly.
I gave my eyes a final wipe.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to keep crying — it’s the shock of the baby, and finding out about Rory and Marina last night. And, besides, I’d be hopeless for you — I mean long-term. I don’t have the right face for greeting patients, and I’d forget to pass on messages about cardiacs and things.’
‘We can still go on seeing each other.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘When you’re pregnant you can’t go around carrying on with other people. I mean it turns you into a sort of nun, having a baby.’
Finn laughed, but bitterly. ‘You know, do you? From your quarter of an hour’s experience. You’ll still have to come in for check-ups. If you don’t want to see me, I suppose Jackie Barrett can look after you.’
‘Who’s she?’
‘My new intern.’
Oh, God, I minded about her. I minded like hell. I fought back the tears. I didn’t dare kiss Finn, or I might have broken down.
‘Goodbye and thank you,’ I said.
Finn looked suddenly tired and defeated. ‘All right, go back to Rory if you want to, but remember I’m here. You’ve only to pick up a telephone and I’ll come and take you away.’
Chapter Twenty
Which wasn’t a very good basis for trying to rebuild a marriage. When I got home, I was all screwed up to tell Rory about the baby, but he was so immersed in slapping blue paint on a huge canvas, absolutely lost to the world, that I funked it and so, having not told him, I found it more and more difficult.
In fact, he was so obsessed with work for the next few weeks, he hardly noticed me at all.
I thought endlessly about the baby. No more staying in the cinema to see the film once again — got to get home to the baby-sitter. No more running away to sea. I thought of dirty nappies and sleepless nights, and maternity bras, and getting bigger and heavier, and less attractive to Rory.
But somehow, I felt excited too. Growing inside was something that, when it arrived, would really need me. Something I could love totally and unashamedly, as I wanted to love Rory, as circumstances had stopped me loving Finn.
I kept wanting to tell Rory. I bought a bottle of champagne, and day after day took it out of its hiding place at the back of a drawer, then funked it and put it away.
I made a concerted attempt to win Rory over sexually, but it had been ‘God, I’m tired’, for days now. As soon as I got into bed, he’d switch off his light, turn his back on me, and pretend to be asleep.
And I’d lie beside him, tears sliding into my hair, listening to the sea washing on the rocks below and thinking of Finn, who was probably still working, going out to deliver a baby or soothing a restless patient. His harsh, beautifully ugly face would swim before my eyes, and I would wonder how much longer I could hold out.
I went to every party on the island too, in the hope that I might see him, but he never turned up. Which meant I drank too much and was even sicker the morning after.
I did see Miss Barrett, the new intern, though. I couldn’t resist having a gawp. I went in for a checkup and had a great shock. She was naturally blonde, and slim — one of those women who look marvellous without make-up — deep, subtle, competent, able to keep her mouth shut. The antithesis of me.
Did I imagine, too, an added warmth in her voice when she talked about Finn? Dr Maclean likes things done this way. Dr Maclean doesn’t approve of pregnant women putting on too much weight. Dr Maclean recommends these vitamin pills.
‘And Dr Maclean recommends me,’ I wanted to shout at her. ‘He’s mine, and trespassers will be very much prosecuted.’
The weeks passed. Slowly I sank into despair. I could hardly bring myself to get up in the morning and get dressed. One Sunday morning, however, when I was trying to keep down some toast and marmalade, I suddenly caught Rory looking at me.
‘You look awful,’ he said. ‘What are you trying to turn yourself into?’
Then followed a ten-minute invective about my general attitude towards him and everyone else on the island. I was lazy, childish, stubborn, stupid and unco-operative. Why didn’t I do something instead of slopping around all day?
‘What do you think I should be doing? Going to evening classes, exchanging meaningful glances over the basket-work and all that?’ I said.
‘Maybe; you could go out more, see people. Buster offered you his horses anytime you wanted to ride. Anything but this plastic tomb you’ve sealed yourself into.’
‘Have you finished?’ I whispered.
‘Yes, for the time being. I’m sorry I came on so strong. I didn’t mean to be quite so vicious, but I’m fed up with sharing a house with a zombie.’
I got up without looking at him and dragged myself upstairs. He was right. One look at myself in the mirror sent me yelping to the bathroom to wash my hair.
Then I rang Buster and asked if I could come and ride with him that afternoon. Rory was absurdly pleased and even rubbed my hair dry for me.
‘Stay over at the castle when you’ve finished,’ he said. ‘I�
��ll come over and take you all out to dinner.’
For the first time in months he kissed me.
Buster and I rode up the lower slopes through beech trees between mossy rocks. Walter Scott ran about, snorting and chasing rabbits. Finally we reached the top.
‘Hospital’s finished now,’ said Buster, pointing his whip at the new building on the right. ‘Finn’s got it up jolly fast. Have you been inside?’
I shook my head.
Buster’s voice — the usual mixture of sex, gin and a dash of bitters — flowed on. ‘Have you seen Finn’s new popsy?’
I stiffened. ‘Popsy?’
‘Dr Barrett,’ went on Buster. ‘She’s an absolute smasher. Took my lumbago to see her last week — can hardly keep my hands off her.’
‘Are she and Finn having a walk-out?’ I asked.
‘Why do you think he brought her up here?’ said Buster, as though it were a matter of course. ‘Finn isn’t daft.’
Black gloom overwhelmed me as I rode back down the hill. Finn in love with someone else. That left Rory and me, didn’t it?
‘I think I’ll go straight home now,’ I said.
‘Isn’t Rory taking us out to dinner?’ asked Buster.
‘He is,’ I said, ‘but there’s something I want to tell him first. And I want to change too.’
We stabled the horses, and as I drove back home I decided now was the time to tell Rory about the baby.
‘We’ll have to face the music together, mate,’ I said to the child inside me. ‘Maybe he’ll surprise us and be delighted after all.’
I went into the house and tiptoed upstairs to get the champagne. The bedroom door was open.
And I caught them red-handed.
Chapter Twenty-one
Marina and Rory in bed. For a second all I could think was how beautiful they looked on my dark blue sheets — her glorious mass of red hair cascading all over the pillows. Just like a Hollywood film. Two people too beautiful for real life.
Then I screamed and they looked round. Marina recovered from the shock first.
‘I’m sorry, Emily,’ she said. ‘But you had to know sometime.’
‘Oh, I’ve known,’ I said. ‘I’ve known for ages and I’ve known too about your being brother and sister.’
That rocked them.
‘I mean, it’s nice your keeping it in the family,’ I went on, ‘but that sort of thing is rather frowned on in the prayer book and by the law, I should think.’
I ran out of the room, locked myself in the loo and started to cry. After a few minutes someone came and rattled on the door.
‘Go away!’ I screamed. ‘Use the other loo. This one’s engaged.’
‘Emily, it’s me. Marina’s gone. For God’s sake come out. I want to help you.’
‘Help me?’ I felt my tears escalating into hysterical laughter. ‘Help me? What can you do to help me?’
‘Let me in, or I’ll break the door down.’
‘No!’ I screamed. ‘No! No!’ There was a silence, and then an explosion.
I screamed again. The door was swinging and Rory was standing in the doorway, a smoking gun in his hand. He’d shot the lock out.
‘Now, come out!’ he said, grabbing my arm and dragging me into the bedroom. Walter Scott sat whimpering in the corner.
‘I know why you married me,’ I hissed. ‘Just to release the cash from Hector’s will, to give you a front of respectability so you could carry on with Marina, your dear little sister.’
Rory was trembling. ‘Who told you all this?’ he said.
‘Hamish did,’ I said.
‘He’s a swine,’ said Rory.
‘He’s unhappy,’ I said. ‘He didn’t want anyone to be left out. He certainly hasn’t behaved any worse than you.’
‘When you’re desperate, you suspend any kind of morality,’ Rory said, echoing Finn’s words of two months before.
Then he told me, quietly and without any emotion, that when he’d first met me, he’d been very attracted to me, had thought I was so gentle, loving and understanding, that we might even make a go of it. He said he had intended, had tried desperately hard, to break it off with Marina, but had failed to do so. And there was nothing he could plead by way of excuse or justification. Volcanoes of invective and abuse kept boiling up inside me, and sinking down again. It was his detachment that paralysed my powers of speech. But for the cold, fixed shadows in his eyes, and his deathly pallor, he seemed his normal self.
‘Marina and I do realize we’re social pariahs, in the wilderness for good and all. She’s upset, of course, because she can’t have my children.’
‘She’s upset,’ I breathed. ‘Oh, boy, do I feel sympathy for her. I suppose it’s more exciting, doing it here in our bed. It’s much more exotic than turning on ten miles away where I couldn’t possibly catch you.’
He looked at me. Did I imagine there was a flicker of despair in his eyes.
Then he said the fatal words.
‘I’m sorry, Em.’
‘Get out,’ I hissed. ‘Get out! Get out.’
He stood irresolute for a minute.
‘I don’t want to spend another minute under the same roof as you,’ I said.
I suppose that was the cue he wanted. Within two minutes he’d thrown his things into a suitcase and Walter and he were gone.
Whimpering with terror, I rushed to the telephone.
I recognized Jackie Barrett’s voice immediately. There was music in the background.
‘Can I speak to Dr Maclean?’ I said.
‘Just a minute.’ How cool and off-hand she sounded. ‘Is it urgent? He’s very tied up at the moment.’
‘Yes it is. Very urgent.’
‘Who’s that speaking?’
‘It’s personal.’
‘Finn, darling,’ she said, and I could just imagine her turning up her palms in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I’m afraid it’s for you.’
I slammed down the receiver.
Rory gone. Finn obviously taken care of by Dr Barrett. That left the baby and me.
‘You’re the only thing I’ve got now,’ I said numbly.
It wouldn’t take me long to pack my suitcase, either. If I hurried I could catch the seven o’clock ferry.
I rang for a taxi.
When the doorbell rang I grabbed Rory’s dark glasses to hide my swollen eyes, gathered up my two suitcases and walked to the top of the stairs. I suppose I must have missed the top step. The next moment I was falling. The pain was something I’d never known or could ever have imagined. The rest was blackness.
Chapter Twenty-two
Through a haze of pain, I kept dreaming of Marina and Rory in bed together, writhing like snakes on those navy-blue sheets.
Then I heard a familiar voice say, ‘The doses have been exceptionally strong, but her reflexes are much better.’
A woman’s voice said, ‘It’s unlikely we’ll get a peep out of her for twenty-four hours.’
Painfully, battling with nausea, I opened my eyes and there, miraculously, was Finn standing at the end of the bed talking to a nurse.
The image of Rory and Marina floated back in front of me, and I screamed.
Finn moved like lightning.
‘Darling Emily, it’s me.’
I went on screaming and yelling incoherently. He had his arms round me. ‘I’ll deal with her,’ he said. The nurse melted away.
I sat rigid. ‘I remember everything that happened,’ I said.
‘It’s Finn, Emily darling.’
I stopped screaming and collapsed against him. ‘Oh, Finn! Help me!’
‘You’ve had a bad dream.’
‘I remember everything.’ My lips began to tremble. ‘You promise not to do anything to find Rory? Not anything!’
‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured me.
He persuaded me to lie back on the pillows, but kept a firm grip on my hand.
‘Don’t go away,’ I whispered.
‘I’m staying right here.�
�
‘I thought you didn’t want me any more, and then I found Rory and Marina…’
‘Steady, darling, don’t think about it. You’re going to get better.’
‘But I saw them in bed together! I saw them!’
The edge of the cliff began to crumble. I started to scream and lash about. The nurse came back with a hypodermic syringe. I tried to struggle, but Finn held me still. Whatever it was they gave me worked instantly.
Next time I surfaced, I was calmer. I was in an ugly, fawn but sunny room. A fat nurse was arranging some daffodils in a blue vase. There were flowers everywhere. ‘Is this a funeral parlour?’ I asked.
She rushed over and started fumbling with my pulse.
‘Where am I?’
‘In hospital.’
‘Good old hospital. With hot and cold housemen in every bedroom.’
‘I’ll get Dr Maclean,’ she said, and belted off. I heard mutterings in the passage about ‘still being delirious’. Finn walked into the room.
‘Jump in, Doctor,’ I said, ‘we’ll be delirious together.’
‘It sounds as though she’s recovered,’ Finn said to the nurse.
He was one of those rewarding men who can betray emotion in public. His yellow eyes were filled with tears as he looked down at me.
‘Hello, baby.’
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Don’t try to talk.’
‘I missed you,’ I said, ‘I missed you horribly.’
He smiled. ‘I suppose you must have. You talked enough in your sleep.’ He looked absolutely grey with tiredness. The dope they’d given me had removed every vestige of my self-control. ‘I do love you,’ I said. ‘You’ve got such a lovely face.’
They kept me under gradually reduced sedation for the first forty-eight hours, bringing me back to earth slowly. I can’t remember when the baby drifted back into my consciousness, but I remember suddenly saying to Finn in panic, ‘The baby? It’s all right, isn’t it?’
He took my hand. ‘I’m afraid you lost it. We tried to save it, darling, you must believe that.’
I felt gripped by a piercing sadness. Then I said, ‘Where’s Rory?’
