by Isobel Chace
Her mother had been the other traitor who had made no bones about her joy in going over to the enemy's camp.
'My dear, I couldn't be more pleased!' she had crooned in ecstasy. 'I've always had a soft spot for William. Dear boy!'
'You don't think it might be a trifle awkward as he's only just
stopped being engaged to Jennifer?' Georgina had said practically.
'I never took that particular relationship very seriously, dear,' her mother had replied, quite unperturbed. 'And nor should you. William knows what he's doing, I'm sure. Jennifer would never have done for him. Why, he looked and sounded like a grown man when he was only fifteen, and Jennifer —well, Jennifer is Jennifer, and we all love her dearly, but no one could describe her as mature yet in her love affairs. Why are you laughing, Georgie? Don't you think that's why William decided not to marry her after all?'
Georgina had regarded her mother with a little less than the usual affection she had for her. 'It wasn't William who broke things off, it was Jennifer. She prefers Duncan, or so she says. Hasn't she told you yet?'
Her mother's brow had creased thoughtfully. 'Duncan? You mean that little boy who was forever making her cry when you were all children? No, she hasn't said a single word to your father and me. She probably knows we wouldn't approve of her chopping and changing every few minutes —and certainly not to someone like Duncan! What a repulsive little boy he was!'
'I thought so,' Georgina admitted. 'Jennifer says she always rather liked him, only I used to bully them both into behaving badly. Is it true, Mother? Did I bully Jennifer?'
'Whoever gave you that idea? Your father used to say I made you look after Jennifer too much, and it would serve me right if you went through one of those tiresome bossy phases elder sisters do sometimes, but I can't say I ever noticed that you did. The only person you ever fought with was William. You turned into a regular shrew every time he came around.' She had laughed softly. 'The magic chemistry already beginning to work between you seems the most likely solution to that! It seems ridiculous now, but when your father and I were courting we used to fight like wildcats too, but since we got married we've seldom had a cross word. That's how it will be with you and William, you see!'
Georgina, unable to follow her on this particular romantic flight of fancy, had merely looked sulky. 'A quiet wedding would be much more suitable. I'm sure William would prefer a register office —'
'Certainly not! This is your big day, darling! William and I have already agreed you'll be married in the village church with all your friends about you. He doesn't approve of hole-and-corner weddings any more than I do. They lack conviction.'
'I lack conviction,' Georgina had said sadly.
'Very proper in a bride,' her mother had put in quickly. 'You can rely on William to more than make up for any reservations you have, however. I do like a man who knows his own mind!'
Georgina had made one last attempt to win her mother over to her side. 'What about Jennifer?' she had asked bluntly. 'She won't like it — '
Mrs. Perry hadn't even bothered to look up from her sewing. 'Jennifer will have to live with her own decisions,' she had said. And then she had looked up, holding her daughter's whole attention by the simple expedient of waving her needle in her face. 'If you let Jennifer ruin this for you, Georgina, I'll never forgive you!' she had declared with unusual vigour. 'William is everything I hoped for you, and if you throw his love away in a foolish gesture of concern for Jennifer, he's unlikely to give you a second chance to make a fool of him. Be happy with him, darling, and forget all about everything else. If you don't, you'll be storing up a great deal of unhappiness for yourself. Love denied turns to bitterness more often than it can be sublimated into service for others.'
'I haven't said I'm in love with William,' Georgina had protested.
'I can't imagine your marrying him for any other reason!' her mother had retorted. 'Don't be a silly girl! Of course you're in love with him! So marry him and be happy, and give over worrying about Jennifer, do! The Jennifers of this world are very well able to look after themselves.'
Georgina hoped she was right. She had been too busy bending to the wind that was William these last few days to have given much thought to her sister, but she had spoken to her the night before. Jennifer had been out with Duncan and had come in late. There had been a hectic flush in her cheeks and her eyes had sparkled with the excitement of the evening's dancing.
'Will you give this letter to William tomorrow?' she had asked Georgina.
'You'll probably see him before I do,' Georgina had answered.
'Mother has an idea it's unlucky for a bride to see her groom before they meet in church.'
'But the letter is for afterwards, darling,' Jennifer had drawled, a malicious smile on her lips. 'We don't want him to carry you off to the wilder shores of the Indian Ocean still wondering about his first love, do we? It's only to say. I don't bear either of you any resentment for leaving me behind without giving a thought as to whether I shall be happy without you both.'
'But if you're going to marry Duncan—?'
Jennifer had shrugged her shoulders. 'Am I? William was a lot less boring than Duncan, if you want to know, only he was always going away. You're welcome to him!' The letter. Georgina hadn't given it a thought from that moment till this. She opened her handbag and scrabbled round inside, looking for it.
'Are you going to be sick?' William asked her.
'No. Why?' She found the pale mauve envelope with a sigh of relief. For a moment she had thought she had forgotten to transfer it from one bag to the other, and she could well imagine Jennifer's anger if she had forgotten to give her precious letter to William.
'You look a trifle green,' he observed.
'I thought I'd lost Jennifer's letter.' She handed it to him. 'It's for you.'
'So I see,' he said dryly. He examined the envelope with care, noting the way the flap had been tucked into the back and the way Jennifer had written BY HAND in the top left-hand corner, in huge, flamboyant capitals, and William down below, underlining it with a strong double line. 'Have you read it?'
'Of course not. It's addressed to you.'
'You might have been curious as to what she had to say to me now that I'm your husband.' He pulled the single sheet out of the envelope and opened it slowly. 'Weren't you a little bit curious?' he asked Georgina, a funny little smile playing round his lips.
'If I was, I managed to restrain it by forgetting all about it. I thought I'd left it in my other handbag—' She broke off as his expression changed to one of cold contempt.
'I don't believe you,' he said.
'Why not? What does she say?' Georgina demanded. She snatched the letter out of his hand and began to read it for herself. It was dated the day before yesterday and began, Darling William— ‘I don't understand!' Georgina said brokenly. ‘I don't understand it!'.
‘Don't you? It seems quite simple to me. Jennifer changed her mind again and tried to let me know she'd made a terrible mistake and very much hoped I would take her back after all. Why did you do it, Georgina? Why? It wasn't as though you wanted to marry me yourself. Or did you? Is that why you deprived us of our chance of happiness?'
‘But it wasn't like that! She told me to give you the letter after the wedding. I made a point of telling her that Mother wouldn't allow me to see you before the service began. Jennie said it was to tell you that she didn't bear you any resentment for marrying me.'
‘That isn't what she says there,' William pointed out.
‘I can't help what she wrote to you! I'm telling you what happened!'
‘And I don't believe you.'
Georgina went very white. For one awful moment she thought she was going to faint. ‘I don't care what you believe! I don't tell lies!'
‘Meaning Jennifer does? Forgive me, my dear wife, if I choose to believe the woman I love. Her record gives her a credence which yours does not!'
‘‘You don't have to stay married to me!' Georgina
cried out. ‘An annulment would suit me just fine!'
‘Oh, Georgie, stop whistling in the dark! Why suppress the letter and marry me in the first place if it's an annulment you want?'
Georgina gave way to an hysterical laugh. ‘Why indeed? That ought to prove it to you that I didn't read the letter in advance. If this isn't just like Jennifer! How she loves to stir things up!'
‘And you don't?'
She sobered. ‘No, I don't think I do. I haven't the imagination to make the most of my chances. If I had, I would have read your letter then and there and found out what Jennifer was up to. One is at such a disadvantage when one expects everyone to behave by one's own standards. You'd have thought I'd have learned better by now.' It was a cry from the heart, but William showed no sign of taking it as such.
'Very clever,' he remarked. 'If I didn't know you better I might have believed you. God, Georgina, I didn't think even you hated me as much as that!'
'You've never done anything to make me like you very much, so why shouldn't I? Not that I did! Not because of you, but because of me. I wouldn't stoop —'
'Words, Georgie. I think you'd do almost anything to get even with me—perhaps you think you're justified, who knows? But I can promise you you won't enjoy the fruits of your triumph! Marriage can be heaven or hell, my dear. I was going to try and make it as pleasant as possible for you; I now feel relieved of any such obligation. My vengeance can be as bitter as yours —and a great deal more intimate!'
She closed her eyes, trying not to listen. 'Why don't you let me go and marry your marvellous Jennifer, if that's what you want to do?' she asked him.
He was quiet for so long that she thought he hadn't heard her and she opened her eyes to see what he was doing. His face was very close to hers in what could easily have been mistaken as a loving gesture. Only she could see the cold hardness of his eyes.
'What I have, I hold, Georgina Ayres,' he said slowly. 'Isn't that what I promised you this morning? To have and to hold, from this day forward? For ever? For the rest of your life, my dear, dear wife!'
She closed her eyes again, giving herself up to misery. What a fool she had been to marry him, she thought. What a fool! Perhaps she had said it aloud, though she had said it to herself.
'Why did you marry me, Georgie?' he asked her. 'I couldn't really have forced you to it, as you very well know. What made you actually say the fatal words?'
The pain of her unhappiness collected as a lump in her chest and the back of her throat felt as stiff as a board.,
'I think I wanted to,' she answered. 'I wanted to see Sri Lanka.'
'And to be my wife?'
'I don't know,' she confessed. 'I tried not to think about it. I thought you'd find out —I thought you might be kinder once we were away from home. I don't know what I thought!'
To her surprise he smiled at that. 'Very likely! Poor Georgie, do you always hit out before you think, even when it's yourself who gets hurt?'
Her gaze flew to the yellow smudge that was all that was left of the black eye she had given him.
'Only with you,' she confided. 'You're the only person I've ever hated.' She swallowed, summoning up all the reserves she had at her disposal. 'I wish I were as nasty as you think me,' she said passionately, 'and I'd make you wish you'd never been born!'
His smile widened. 'You can try,' he invited her.
He turned away from her, settling back in his seat, and began to read the printed menu he had found in the pocket in front of him. 'Good lord, they don't mean us to starve! Two dinners and three breakfasts! That ought to hold us for a few hours after we get there!'
Georgina slept fairly well until the vast aeroplane prepared to come down at Bombay. She had watched the pirate film that had been provided for their entertainment, but had been unable to keep her mind on the rather trite story. She had enjoyed the fencing, though. She had done some fencing herself while she had been away at college and she found that that knowledge added to rather than detracted from the carefully staged fights on the screen.
She had taken some pleasure in telling William that the heroine was very much better with the foil than the hero.
'Are you a female chauvinist as well?' he had asked her. 'I am when she has to work quite so hard not to disarm him entirely,' she had retorted. 'She could take him apart any time she chose!'
'It wouldn't do much for the story line,' he had observed. 'The helpless maiden rescuing the knight in shining armour doesn't sound right. That's the trouble with women these days, they won't stick to their own role in life.'
'Wailing and weeping on the sidelines went out with crinolines,' she had said with satisfaction. 'We've learned it's better to rely on ourselves since then. It's better to make one's own mistakes.'
'And have two heads in every household?'
She had considered the point carefully, sure he had laid a trap for her. 'I suppose it works better when the man is the head and the woman the heart of the family, but some men abdicate their responsibilities and then the woman has to step in or the children suffer.'
He had picked up her hand in his, examining the ring on her finger. 'I shan't abdicate my responsibilities,' he had said.
It wasn't possible to get any accurate impressions of what Bombay was really like. Circling over it as they came down to refuel at the International Airport, it looked much smaller than Georgina had imagined it to be. But then, from the air, all India looked the same dun colour and practically uninhabited. The teeming millions of India were nowhere to be seen.
'Next stop Colombo,' said William.
'And then where?'
'Nowhere today. I'll be picking up a car tomorrow and then we'll drive up to Kandy and settle in. Today, we'll sleep off the flight and catch up with ourselves.'
'And see Colombo?' she prompted him.
He shook his head. 'There'll be plenty of time for that. Don't look like that, Georgie. We're going to do things my way and it simply doesn't pay to rush about the moment you get off an aeroplane after a long flight. You'll see the whole island before we go home, I promise you. Only not today.'
She looked up at him through her lashes. 'You're still angry,' she accused him. 'It will take more than that to spoil my pleasure, though. Everyone says Sri Lanka is a beautiful place, and even you can't make it ugly just to spite me!'
He was taken aback by the attack. 'My dear Georgina, hasn't anyone ever told you about the effects of jet lag? If you want to make yourself ill, by all means take yourself off and visit the museum, or anywhere else you want to go. I'm going to bed!'
She wondered if she wanted to brave an unknown city in an unknown world by herself and came to the conclusion she didn't.
'You're sure it isn't because you want to ruin things for me?' she demanded, still suspicious.
'My revenge will be a great deal more subtle than that,' he told her. 'Enjoy Sri Lanka all you can, it's your marriage to me which is going to be your prison. For once, you're going to pay for taking something away from Jennifer out of the rather despicable envy you've always had for her. To be an unloved wife is more of a punishment than to deny you any amount of sightseeing, as you'll find out!'
He made a formidable enemy, she thought. 'You mean we're each going to live our own lives — ?'
'What on earth makes you think that?' he exploded.
'You said unloved. I thought you meant—unloved.'
'I see.' His grim amusement cut her to the quick. 'Making love is a euphemism that should never be used in our kind of marriage, but I don't see why I should deny myself the pleasures of your body for such a quixotic reason, do you?'
'I think you're horrid!'
'So you've said before. It becomes tedious. It would be more wifely if you kept your opinion of me to yourself in future.'
'While you can say what you like about me? You'd better look out that I don't black your other eye for you! A fine fool you'd look if I did!'
'By all means try if you think you can, but to be forewarned is t
o be forearmed. I might get in first. Have you thought of that?'
'You mean you'd hit me?' She could scarcely believe her ears. Surely William wasn't the kind of man who would hit a woman?
'There are times when I'd give anything to wallop you black and blue, but I don't suppose I will unless badly provoked, and you won't do that, will you, Georgie Porgie? I'll make a pact with you: if you keep your fists to yourself, so will I. Agreed?'
She sniffed. 'You talk as if I were always punching you in the face,' she complained.
'Once was enough,' he said dryly. 'I won't be as forbearing another time, my ruffian wife.'
'No? I suppose you'll think of Jennifer and let fly? What a pity she won't be there to see it!'
He snorted in derision. 'Could be! And you won't have my mother in your corner to cheer you on either, which should reduce your chances somewhat. You'd better make up your mind to behave
yourself like the lady you were brought up to be!'
She managed a wide, insouciant smile, to show him how little she cared about his threats. 'I'll see,' she compromised. 'It was such a splendid black eye last time that the joy of it may last me for a long time to come, but I'm not making any promises, you understand? Even ladies slap down their menfolk when the occasion demands it, you know.'
