Follow Thy Desire

by Anne Mather

  ‘Helen!’ Her father caught her arm. ‘I won’t let you do this. Do you understand? I won’t let you make a fool of us like this. You’re going to marry Barry if I have to carry you to the church bodily, do you hear?’

  Helen gasped. ‘You can’t be serious!’

  ‘Oh, can’t I?’ Mr Raynor looked grim. ‘All girls go through this—this stage-fright. Even I had doubts on the morning I married your mother, and look how that’s turned out. I’m not going to let you throw away your life for a whim. Because that’s all it is, a whim!’

  Helen pulled away from him. ‘You can’t make me marry anyone,’ she cried, and hearing her words she thought how obscene they sounded in a house which only minutes before had been full of happiness and excitement. ‘You can take me to the church, you can lead me down the aisle, but you can’t make me say “I will”.’

  ‘Oh, Helen…’

  Her mother burst into further floods of tears, and Helen wished with all her heart that she could comfort her. But the only words Mrs Raynor wanted to hear she could not utter, and with a choking throat she ran out of the room.

  Uncle Ben, her aunt’s husband, stared in amazement at her as she ran through the kitchen where he was helping himself to a second glass of whisky. Outside, the yellow Volkswagen Susan had arrived in blocked the drive. On impulse, she ran to that and climbed behind the wheel. As usual Susan, with her natural disregard for property, had left the keys in the ignition, and the engine fired at once. Whether her parents had guessed what she planned to do, Helen didn’t know, but in the rear-view mirror she saw Barry’s sister run out as she accelerated swiftly down the road. At least she had believed her, thought Helen bitterly, noticing Susan was still wearing the jeans and sweater she had worn to come round in.

  * * *

  Perhaps she had been foolish to come to the flat, she thought some time later, when the hammering came at the door. It was the first place they would have thought of looking for her, and for a moment panic gripped her as she contemplated what Barry was going to say. Still, she had to face his wrath sooner or later, and getting up from where she had been huddled on her knees beside the gas fire, she went to the door.

  But it was not Barry who was standing outside, hands pushed aggressively into the pockets of his overcoat. It was Morgan, and judging from his expression he was no less angry than his stepbrother would have been.

  Helen didn’t want to let him in. She was afraid of what he was going to say. But he pushed past her, and short of leaving the door ajar for any passing stranger to eavesdrop, she had no choice but to close it after him. He had stationed himself on the hearth, and when she turned to face him, his mouth was a thinly drawn line.

  ‘Well?’ he said, and there was savagery in the word. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’

  Helen chose her words carefully. ‘I’m not—playing at anything—’

  ‘Damn you, you know what I mean. What game is this you’re instigating? What do you hope to gain from making a fool of everybody, including yourself?’

  Helen pressed her palms tightly together. ‘I—don’t hope to gain anything,’ she replied, again using his words. ‘I’m sorry, but—’

  ‘You’re sorry!’ Morgan glared at her. ‘Do you think sorry makes everything right? My God, you’re a cool one! Jilting my stepbrother on his wedding day, and then turning round and saying you’re sorry! Couldn’t you at least have had the decency to tell him? Instead of skulking here like the bitch you are?’

  His words tore into her heart like so many burning bullets, and it was all she could do to continue looking at him, to hide the pain he was deliberately inflicting.

  ‘I—I told my parents—’

  ‘And Susan—thank heavens!’

  ‘Susan?’

  ‘Yes, Susan. Who the hell do you think told Barry?’

  ‘I thought—my father—’

  ‘Your father did nothing except swallow enough whisky to sink a battleship. And your mother…’ He shook his head. ‘She’s taken to her bed, and refuses to see anyone.’

  ‘Oh, God!’

  ‘Yes—oh, God!’ he mimicked her cruelly, ‘Helen have you got no conscience?’

  ‘Of course I’ve got a conscience,’ she cried helplessly. ‘But what would you have had me do? Marry your brother knowing I didn’t care for him as I should?’ She pulled a handkerchief out of the pocket of her pants and blew her nose. ‘You don’t understand…’

  ‘Oh, spare me the dramatics! And if you start to cry, so help me, I’ll strangle you! You have nothing to cry about. You’re the one who started all this. You’ve got what you wanted, so don’t turn on the tears for my benefit.’

  Helen caught her breath. ‘You’re—you’re so cruel!’ she choked. ‘I didn’t want to hurt anyone.’

  ‘But you have,’ he declared flatly. ‘Like your father, Barry uses alcohol to assuage his feelings, but when he gets over his grief, you’re going to feel the brunt of his anger and resentment.’

  ‘Then that should please you,’ she retorted, taking refuge in retaliation, but his next words disarmed her.

  ‘Strangely enough it doesn’t,’ he muttered grimly. ‘I’ve had the experience of a marriage that didn’t work, and it can be hell! I’ve told Barry that, but something tells me he won’t take my word for it.’

  The reminder of his married state was like another knife turning in an already open wound. Helen’s arms wrapped themselves almost convulsively about her slim body, and for the first time she looked beyond the immediate present to the hollow emptiness of the days ahead. She knew Morgan was right about one thing. Barry would be vindictive in his resentment, and there was every possibility that he might try to do her some bodily harm. She remembered his jealousy of Morgan, and knew if he ever heard the real reason behind her rejection of him, his temper could well get the better of him. She wasn’t frightened of what he might do to her, rather apprehensive of the way he might choose to humiliate her.

  ‘So…’ Morgan withdrew his hands from his pockets to hang loosely at his sides. ‘Why did you do it?’

  It was the question she had been dreading, and bending her head she made an offhand movement with her shoulders. ‘I—I don’t love him.’

  ‘It’s a bit late to decide that now, isn’t it?’ he snapped. ‘As I hear it, you’ve been engaged for six months.’

  ‘We have.’ Helen moved her shoulders again. ‘I—well, I suppose I’m entitled to change my mind.’

  ‘Change your mind, be damned!’ In an instant he had covered the space between them and grasped her by her shoulders. Shaking her until her head tumbled back on her neck like a broken stem, he raged: ‘It was what happened the other night, wasn’t it? The night I kissed you? You let a moment’s promiscuity erase feelings that have tempered and matured over months of care and consideration! You’ve let the fire of passion blind you to the real and lasting emotion you share with Barry—’

  ‘No!’

  ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘I know it!’ she declared tremulously. ‘I—Barry has never kissed me like you did!’

  ‘Perhaps you should let him,’ he retorted coldly, but she shook her head.

  ‘I—I couldn’t. Don’t you see? I couldn’t let him—touch me as you touched me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because—because I couldn’t.’ She moistened her dry lips with her tongue. ‘Morgan, I’ve never wanted any man to touch me before—’

  He thrust her away from him so violently she almost fell and went to stand by the window, staring broodingly at the street outside. He had pushed his hands into his pockets, but she could see their balled outline through the material of his coat, and she knew he was by no means recovered from his burst of temper. Now and again a spasm crossed his face, as if of pain, and when he turned back to her he lifted a hand to his head and massaged his scalp as if it hurt him.

  Speaking through his teeth, he said slowly: ‘I told you the other night, Helen, there can neve
r be anything between us. You’re a beautiful girl, and I enjoyed—touching you. But that’s all, do you understand me? That’s all.’

  It was like a blow to the solar plexis. It had the same breath-stopping impact. Helen weathered it bravely, and then said: ‘It makes no differenece. I still can’t marry your stepbrother.’

  Morgan made a sound of frustration. ‘But that’s crazy! Helen, there might be a chance—just a chance—that Barry will come round and forgive you for today’s fiasco. Just a chance, mind you. But if he did—if he could be persuaded—’

  ‘No,’ she said, clearly and succinctly. ‘No, Morgan. I won’t change my mind.’

  ‘God in Heaven!’

  He turned back to the window again, and Helen moved nervously across to the kitchenette. ‘Do you—that is, would you like some coffee?’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Yes, coffee. I—I have some dried milk, or at least, there’s some here. I don’t suppose technically it is mine any longer…’

  ‘Helen!’ His use of her name was agonised. ‘Helen, don’t do this. Please! Come with me to Banklands now. Tell Barry it was all a terrible mistake—’

  ‘With sugar, or without?’ she asked tautly, and his groan of impotence went unacknowledged as she filled the kettle.

  There was something steadying about preparing coffee, Helen thought, concentrating on the task to the exclusion of everything else. Spooning the instant grains into the cups, waiting for the kettle to boil, she could pretend that everything was as it should be—that only hours before she had not abandoned her bridegroom and her family and run away, that the pile of presents laid out in the reception hall of the hotel were not waiting to be returned to their donors, that Morgan had not just delivered the most shattering rejection of her life. It was unbearable to imagine what life would be like after he returned to his home in Osweba. To consider the days and weeks, the months and probably years before she might lay eyes on him again was too tortuous to endure, and she had to steel herself not to rush into the living room and beg him to take her with him…in any capacity he cared to name.

  The cups rattled irritatingly in their saucers as she carried the tray through to him. She set it down abruptly on the table by the window and pushed a cup and the sugar basin towards him.

  ‘Help yourself!’

  ‘I don’t want any coffee!’ Morgan expelled his breath on a sigh. ‘I don’t know how you can drink the stuff. In your place, I’d be feeling pretty damn sick!’

  Helen, who had raised her cup to her lips, put it down again. ‘I do feel pretty damn sick!’ she retorted tremulously. ‘But I have to go on, don’t I? I have to survive. With or without your permission.’

  ‘My permission!’ Morgan shook his head bitterly. ‘My God, if I’d known—if I’d suspected—’

  ‘—what kissing me might bring about?’ she finished flatly, and he nodded.

  ‘Yes. Yes.’ He raked back his hair with the gesture she was coming to know so well. ‘Helen, you don’t know how bad I feel about this.’

  ‘There’s no need—’

  ‘There’s every need, damn you! God, why did I do it? Why did I let you goad me into it?’

  ‘G-goad you into it?’ Helen stared at him disbelievingly. ‘Is that how you see it? Is that the conclusion you’ve reached to satisfy your conscience?’

  Morgan’s fists clenched. ‘I’ll never do that,’ he retorted. ‘Satisfy my conscience, I mean. I’ll never forgive myself for what I’ve done to Barry, or you too, for that matter.’

  ‘I don’t want your forgiveness!’ she burst out raggedly, and the pulse at his temple jerked spasmodically.

  ‘What do you want, then?’ he demanded, and she took a deep breath before giving in to the impulse to plead with him.

  ‘I want to go back to Osweba with you. Take me with you! You said you wanted someone to help with Andrea. Let me do it. I’m used to dealing with children, and I’m sure I could help her—’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Why not?’ She trembled. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you think I’m fit to have charge of your daughter?’

  ‘That has nothing to do with it,’ he muttered, pacing restlessly across the room.

  ‘What has, then?’ She paused. ‘You needn’t worry about—about you and me—’

  ‘Needn’t I?’ His tone was sarcastic.

  ‘No.’ She moved her shoulders expressively. ‘I—I should regard it as a job of work. I wouldn’t get in your way—’

  ‘You’d be living in my house.’

  ‘I—I’ll stay at a hotel, then.’

  ‘In Nrubi?’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Helen twisted her hands together. ‘I—I’m not afraid of what—of what people might say. Living in your house, I mean.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘No, I—why, if I was to leave here with—with you, there’d be plenty of talk—’

  ‘Don’t I know it?’

  ‘—so that—so that anything that happened in Nrubi—’

  ‘And what about when you had to come back here?’ he enquired coldly. ‘What then?’

  ‘I—I would face that when the time came.’

  ‘No, Helen.’

  ‘Why no?’

  ‘Because—because—’ Morgan sighed heavily. ‘I explained to you. I want Andrea to come back here to live. The time between then and now would be—four, five months at the most. Could you come back and face your family and friends, not to mention my family, at the end of four months?’

  ‘Yes,’ she cried eagerly. ‘Yes, if you’d let me.’

  ‘Oh, Helen!’

  He stared at her impatiently, but she sensed he was weakening and hurried on: ‘I haven’t—forgotten about your wife, you know. I realise she might object to me living in your house—’

  ‘Pamela has nothing to do with this,’ he stated grimly, and she realised, with angry self-depreciation, that she had overstepped the mark again.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered, bending her head, and he uttered a violent oath.

  ‘You’ve no idea what it’s like living in Africa,’ he said. ‘The heat—and the flies! The insects! Are you afraid of spiders, because I tell you, we get some enormous long-legged monsters, that can move faster than you can.’

  Helen couldn’t help the shiver of unpleasant anticipation that ran over her skin like the brush of a spider’s web, but her voice was steady as she lifted her head and said: ‘Does that mean you’re going to take me?’

  Morgan’s lips tightened. ‘No! That is—dear God, Helen, you don’t know what you’re asking. There’s nothing for you in Osweba. Just the heat, as I’ve said, and a lack of proper sanitation—and the company of a girl who may not even like you!’

  Helen shrugged. ‘I’m prepared to take that chance.’

  ‘Why?’ Morgan’s eyes narrowed. ‘Because you think I might conceivably change my mind about you? Oh, Helen, I won’t do that. I can’t. And what’s more, if—and it’s a big if—if I were to be foolish enough to take you out there, you and I would have to have a new arrangement.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean I’d be your employer and you’d be my employee. Just that. Nothing more. If you’re hoping an African moon will alter anything, forget it. I’ve got no intention of ever touching you again, do you understand?’

  His words were almost as painful as his denunciation had been earlier, but she hid her humiliation on a show of dignity. ‘Have I asked you to?’ she demanded indignantly, but he was not deceived.

  ‘I just wanted you to know that you’d be wasting your time if you’re planning to play the femme fatale!’ he declared brutally. ‘Do you still want to take the job?’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE flight from Nairobi up the coast to Charlottesville was not long, but it was very uncomfortable. After the pressurised cabin of the jetliner which had flown them across two continents to the Kenyan capital, the twelve-seatered transport of Osweba Domestic Airlines jarred
and bucketed them about like a cork on a particularly choppy sea. Apart from themselves, there were only three other passengers, which added to the lightness of the craft and made it that much less stable. Helen, who had never suffered from airsickness in her life, began to feel distinctly queasy, and Morgan’s look was wry as he assured her they would be landing in fifteen minutes.

  Fifteen minutes to Charlottesville, thought Helen, and excited tremors added to her nervousness. Yet, for all that, she would not have wished herself anywhere else than with the man lounging moodily in the seat beside her, knowing there was no immediate chance of their separation. All the way from London, she had told herself that, over and over again, hardly able to believe that he actually agreed to take her with him.

  Not that it had been easy—for either of them. The days following the expected day of the wedding were not ones she would want to live over again, and she had learned what it felt like to be a social leper.

  Of course, everyone blamed Morgan as well, and she realised what she owed him for allowing them to think that. It would have been so much harder to bear it all alone, and while when they were alone he treated her with a kind of veiled contempt, in company he nevertheless stood as a shield between her and the world at large.

  It was natural that Barry should despise both of them, but Mr Fox had shown an unusual amount of understanding. Perhaps that was only as it should be as Morgan was his own son, but whatever his motives Helen was grateful for one person who did not hate her.

  Her own parents took it rather differently. With them, it was more a case of loss of face. She had humiliated them, and they could not forgive her for that. Even Jennifer, thwarted of her big day, was bitter and resentful, furious with her sister for spoiling everything. She had not liked going in to school and having to tell them that the wedding had not taken place. There were too many rumours going around about it being Barry who had jilted Helen, not the other way about, and while Helen welcomed them, Jennifer treated it all as a personal slight.

  The real crunch had come, however, when Helen announced that she was going with Morgan when he returned to Africa. Until then, her mother had adopted an aggrieved air which Helen knew she would discard with time. The news that her elder daughter was planning to travel five thousand miles with a man everyone knew to have a broken marriage behind him threw Mrs Raynor into a horrified panic, and all manner of threats had been produced in an effort to persuade her not to go.