Tame a Proud Heart

by Jeneth Murrey

  She felt no hurt, she was too frozen and numb, and she allowed some sort of instinct to take her footsteps to the Tube station. Her fingers searched in her bag automatically, found her purse and pushed enough money across the counter. She watched them doing it, surprised that they could even hold the coins.

  She let the same instinct take her through the railway station, purchase a ticket, locate the correct platform and climb aboard the train.

  It was the instinct of a wild, wounded animal, the dull necessity to get back to its lair, lick its wounds and lie down quietly to live or die as the fates disposed. The animal would make no noise on its homeward journey and neither did Roz. It was beginning to hurt now, but the hurt was too painful to make a fuss about it. When she was safe, perhaps she would scream with the pain of it, but it would be in a private place where nobody would hear her. At present, she was still too numb and frozen to feel anything but the need to hide.

  By the time she left the train, some more of the numbness had worn off so that she could unclasp her stiff fingers from her bag, take out her purse and scrabble through the contents, the few notes and the handful of coins it contained. It was the remains of her housekeeping money and the bag was one she kept for shopping; it contained her purse, her key-ring and nothing else except a week-old shopping list. But there was enough to get her home.

  In the taxi, she shook herself alive to be practical, forcing her mind to work on survival lines. Eve and her family had been gone for three days; there would be food in the freezer, dry goods in the cupboards… She leaned forward and tapped the partition, asking the driver to set her down at the end of the lane which led to the farm. To buy bread at this time of night was impossible, but she could buy milk at the farm and order a daily delivery.

  Deliberately, she kept her mind on mundane things to stop thinking about anything else, because once she let her mind wander she knew that she would start screaming. She would have to switch on the electricity, perhaps notify the police that she was here— Stephen would have told them that the house would be empty and if there were lights showing somebody was bound to ring the local station. People in villages were like that. They were kind, thoughtful and interfering! She wouldn't have to switch on the power line because the freezer ran off that and Eve wouldn't have switched that off, not after laboriously filling it with garden produce. She would also have to turn on the stop tap to get water… And she left the farm with a pint bottle of milk tucked under her arm, to take the footpath across the fields which would bring her out on to the road within a hundred yards of the house.

  The empty house felt cold and bleak. It wasn't a home any more, it was just a lot of empty rooms and passages, all waiting for somebody to come and live in them, to bring them alive. Roz groped around in the kitchen to find a box of matches and wasted a great many of them while she sorted out which fuses had been removed. Stephen, she thought savagely, was too thorough. It wasn't enough for him to cut off the current, he had to take out the fuses as well!

  The kitchen was clean and neat and the key to the stop tap was in its usual place in the cupboard under the kitchen sink; she got it out and went to wrestle with the iron cover which protected the tap, breaking another fingernail in the process. That made two in one day; she would have to get busy with an emery board tomorrow. Her mind was still rigidly running on its practical lines as she went upstairs to switch on the immersion heater. She would go back down to the kitchen and have a glass of milk; by that time, with luck there would be enough hot water for a bath. There were aspirin in the bathroom cabinet and she would take two of them with a cup of tea after she'd had a bath.

  The milk was icy cold and she smiled to herself sourly as she sat at the kitchen table drinking it. She hadn't managed this very well. She should have taken her time, thought a bit more and brought some things with her, a change of underwear at least—but it didn't really matter. She could wash out her things and leave them to dry overnight. Nothing mattered, not now; not with Charles putting things right after he and Margery had made the mistake of splitting up.

  Roz put that thought out of her mind as she went through the routine she'd planned. She was dry eyed although she thought her heart was truly breaking, it hurt so much. A glass of milk; upstairs to raid the linen cupboard for towels and an old robe of Eve's, then a tepid bath because the immersion heater hadn't been on long enough and back down to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, swallow the two aspirin and count her money.

  She hitched her feet under her on the chair and covered them with the end of the robe—they were bare and cold because Eve's slippers were too small for her—and she spread the contents of her purse on the table top and looked at it ruefully. There wasn't a lot left, the taxi from Brighton had been expensive, but it would be enough for quite a while. She wasn't planning on going anywhere for several days. She didn't need much, some bread perhaps; the milk was going to be delivered and Eve's cupboards were well stocked besides the hoard of tinned goods which her sister called emergency food. Tomorrow she would open a can of soup, if she felt like eating anything.

  Later on, she would go down to the bank in Brighton, get her balance transferred and a new cheque book. Until then she would manage with what she had and what was in the house.

  On the way upstairs, she leaned over the banisters and took the phone off the hook, then she thought again and replaced it. It was better to have a phone ringing and not answered than to have somebody getting an engaged tone from an empty house, and she didn't want any visitors, not until she had thought it all out and decided how she was going to act. It wasn't any good trying to make any plans, not yet.

  She found sheets and pillowcases in the airing cupboard and made up her bed to slip under the duvet, only to start trembling with the shock of her loss, but finally the tears came and she wept with deep, hurting sobs which shook her slender frame. But that didn't matter either. She was quite alone, there was nobody to hear her.

  Some time during the night, she was wakened by muted peals of thunder. The south of England had been enjoying a mini heatwave and the air had been growing steadily more oppressive, but now the fine spell had broken, and Roz listened as the thunder grew louder and nearer. She didn't know what time it was, her watch had stopped and the electric clock in the kitchen wasn't telling the correct time, but it was still dark, and she lay in bed listening to the rising wind and the first spatters of rain against the window.

  Now was the time to be practical, now she was quiet and could make plans—but her mind wasn't ready to plan. It insisted on going back over the last two months. That was all it was, two months, and she should have thought about this before she had hurled herself into marriage. It wasn't as if she was a teenager, she was a woman of twenty-five and should have known better.

  She and Charles had been friendly for five years, but apart from his frequent attempts to get her into bed, which alternated with long periods when he treated her as just another one of the girls, they had never been all that close. There was that damn word again. He had been close to Margery! She should have known that his behaviour, after he came down to Sussex, wasn't normal. Charles was the bachelor free, the cat by himself—had his insistence on marriage been to teach Margery a lesson? Mad, weird ideas flocked into her mind. He and Margery had split up and he wanted to prove to the world and himself that he didn't care. To do it, he'd used Roz in much the same way that she replaced sugar with saccharin if she wanted to lose a bit of weight.

  Margery was the sugar, she was saccharin, as sweet but with a bitter taste at the back of it. Charles hadn't really liked it, so when the chance came to revert to his sugar… This started her crying again, and she thumped the pillow in desperation as the tears continued to fall, and finally she fell asleep with a damp feeling under her cheek.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Roz woke early after a short, heavy sleep. She woke feeling dull, headachy, lethargic and hopeless—so hopeless that she wondered why the sun should be shining. The thunderstorm of t
he night was over and the rain had cleared, now the sun was up and sparkling on wet leaves. By rights, it should have been overcast, grey, sodden with a chill dampness; as utterly miserable as she felt herself.

  She ached all over with wanting Charles, her eyes were hot and puffy with weeping, the lids felt heavy and her head was solid. She lay still for several minutes, wallowing in grief, and then struggled out of bed to wrap herself in Eve's old robe; at least she wouldn't have to queue for the bathroom this morning and the water would be good and hot.

  She stood under the shower, uncaring that her hair was getting wet, letting the needle jets play on her back until she felt some life returning to her numbed body. Then she towelled herself briefly, wrapped up once more in the robe and pattered downstairs on bare feet to make a cup of tea. She set out a mug, tossed a tea bag into it and switched on the kettle before she realised she had drunk the whole of her pint of milk last night. There were faint rumblings from her stomach to remind her that she'd had nothing solid since lunch the previous day, and she flung open the cupboard doors to inspect the contents.

  There was a variety of cereals, but she dismissed them. She didn't want anything really, the tea perhaps and a glass of milk which would slip easily past the hard, hurting lump in her breast, she'd gag on anything else, and she made her way to the back door where the milkman always left the bottles.

  She was bitterly amused to find that she'd not only locked it, she had also shot both bolts, top and bottom. With a bit of struggle, she pushed the bolts back, turned the key and opened the door on to the red-tiled porch—and there, sitting beside the milk bottles, was Charles, a leather jacket flung across his shoulders against the morning chill.

  He looked like a big black cat as he rose lithely to his feet, picked up the bottles in one hand and held out the other to her. Like an automaton, Roz put her hand in his and followed as he led her into the house.

  'I told you, Roz, don't you remember? Nobody walks out on me, and certainly not my wife.' He said it quietly in a conversational tone as he put the bottles on the table and leaned over to switch off the kettle, which was boiling its head off.

  Roz didn't speak, she couldn't. The hard lump in her chest was dissolving into tears and she was striving not to let them fall. Her tongue flickered out to moisten her dry lips.

  'Don't do that!' he snarled. 'I came down here to beat you to death.' His arms were round her and he kissed her instead, dragging her savagely against him and taking his time about it, and then his hand found the opening in the robe and she shivered with delight at his touch. She knew she shouldn't be like this, that she should be strong and fend him off, remain unmoved, but she could no more stop her involuntary response than she could have stopped the sun in the sky. She slumped in his arm, seduced by the caress of his hand on the smooth skin of her hip, and moaned when he began an insidious exploration of her body.

  'What's this?' he demanded thickly as he fingered the collar of the faded old candlewick robe which had started life purple and white but had now faded to a pale petunia and cream. Now that she had stopped resisting, he had both hands free, and he slipped the material from her shoulders and nuzzled into the warm flesh at the base of her neck.

  'Eve's,' she managed the first word with a gulp, raising a hand to caress the back of his neck. More words came from her lips, although she hardly knew what she was saying. 'I didn't bring anything with me…I was going…' Whatever she had been going to do, she didn't say; she couldn't. Charles's mouth was straying from her neck down to her breast and she closed her eyes in ecstasy.

  'Don't,' she whispered, not meaning it. Last night she had been cold and alone with a dreadful dead feeling inside her, and now she was alive again, every inch of her sensitive to his touch. 'Charles, no, I want an explanation…'

  He raised his head and looked at her, his eyes heavy and glazed with desire. 'So do I, but we'll have them later. There's something much more important first. Damn you, Roz, do you know what you did to me last night?' She felt him shudder against her. 'I went through hell, not knowing where you were, what you were doing, and I wanted you—God, how I wanted you! I couldn't do anything except want. I don't think I could stand another night like that. I want you now, so…' Roz struggled weakly against him, knowing that she was lost, that she wasn't strong enough to deny him as he half carried her into the hall and paused with one foot on the stairs because she had renewed her struggles.

  'Charles, we can't…'

  'Why not?' Impatience made his voice ragged.

  'It's—it's morning,' she stammered weakly. 'Somebody might come. The telephone…'

  'Whoever comes can knock and go away again— and,' he reached over the banisters and took the receiver from its cradle, 'the phone can't ring! As for it being morning, what's wrong with that?'

  Over her shoulder he eyed her rumpled bed with disfavour. 'It's a bit narrow, but we'll manage. Stop wriggling, Roz. I need you, and you want it as much as I do.'

  'It's sluttish!' It was a weak protest.

  'Be a slut,' he advised grimly. 'My slut.' His hands were at the fastening of the robe and he grinned at her devilishly as the edges fell open. 'Didn't you borrow a nightie as well?'

  'N-no,' and her lips parted under his, the robe fell to the floor unheeded and the springs of the bed protested against the double burden.

  'A narrow bed has its advantages.' Charles turned over on his back and stared at the ceiling. 'And I like making love to you in the daylight. That has an advantage too. I can see your face.'

  Roz raised her head from where it was lying on his chest and lifted herself on one elbow to look down on him. He looked different somehow; younger, and the strain which had been on his face had disappeared, to be replaced by an expression of content. It curved his mouth and warmed his eyes. 'What about my face?' she asked in a husky whisper.

  Charles put up a hand to stroke the line of her cheek and jaw with a proprietorial finger. 'It's even more beautiful…no colour, just a red, red mouth, and you cry a bit, did you know that?' He struggled his arm free from where it was trapped beneath her and held her face between his hands. 'The ghost, Roz; have I finally driven it away? Has it gone at last?'

  'Ghost?' She looked down at him wonderingly. 'I haven't any ghost, you know that.'

  'Yes, you have.' He was sombre. 'Oh, I know Stephen never had you, but it was your first love, Roz, and first loves are lovely things. There's a sweet nostalgia about them, a spring fever where everything's sunny and warm and the grass is very green. I can forgive you for loving him,' he added magnanimously, 'but I don't want that memory living with us; not to always have you comparing me with him.'

  'You tell me if it's gone, Charles.' She looked at him straightly. 'It's your ghost, not mine.'

  'No, my dear, your brother-in-law doesn't haunt me.'

  'What on earth are you talking about?' She sat up, her indignation making her forget modesty so that she didn't pull the sheet up to cover herself. 'It's you who made all the fuss about Stephen, even when I told you he meant nothing—and, as for that green grass and spring thing, it wasn't anything of the sort. It was a teenage crush. A few kisses, that's all. I never let him…you know that.'

  'Oh, yes, I know,' he smiled at her reminiscently. 'My frightened virgin—but as I said, and although you deny it, that first love's important. It's the glamorous one, the fairy tale, and you told me you couldn't kill off the memory, couldn't forget it. You said we'd have to learn to live with it, don't you remember?'

  Her mind fled back to that morning when they'd driven up to town. She had said that, she could recall every word! Suddenly she grew angry. 'I wasn't talking about me!' She grew vehement as she pushed her hair back from her face. 'I was talking about you! You and your Margery!' And as if a dam had burst, the words crowded her lips.

  'Now it's my turn to ask what you're talking about.' The content had gone from his face and his eyes were furious under their heavy lids. 'What's Margery got to do with it?'

  'What's she
got to do with it?' she echoed him furiously. 'That's what I want to know, what I've always wanted to know. I suppose you've some ready explanation for what I saw yesterday—yes, what I saw! I'm not relying on gossip, although there's been plenty of that—I stood in the hall and watched you!'

  'But you know all about Margery.' Charles rolled over, taking her with him. 'Damn it, she met you in town when you were shopping for the wedding—and she had to tell me that, you never mentioned it. She said you'd had a long talk…'

  'Oh, yes,' Roz said bitterly, 'we had a long talk, but all I learned was that she'd known you a long time, that you told her everything and that you were very close. Do you know what I felt like, have you any idea? I thought I could take a mistress provided it wasn't an ongoing thing, that I couldn't take—but I saw you. She was plastered all over you, practically eating you, and after that, you have the nerve to talk to me about Stephen! And you come down here and I let you… Let me go, I don't want you ever to touch me again!'

  'Yes, you do—and I do—and I'll touch you and have you whenever I want!' Charles was equally angry. 'No, shut up for a minute and listen to me. I'm not sure what you saw, but you've got the wrong idea. I've known Marge a long time, ever since we were kids together in the orphanage—we were no relation, but we sort of adopted each other. I was a bit older and a bit bigger and I looked after her. They encouraged that sort of thing, they said it fostered a family feeling, and that's all Marge was to me, a bit of family.'

  'Family!' Roz shrilled. 'You lived with her for years! That's common knowledge. Everybody knew about it…'

  'Then everybody knew wrong, you bad-minded little bitch!' His hands were firm on her arms and the weight of his body stopped her threshing attempts to get out of bed. 'She lived in my house, she didn't live with me, not ever. I'm not her type.'