A Multitude of Sins

by Margaret Pemberton

  Helena pressed a fist to her month. ‘Oh, no!’ she whispered, sinking down on to a chair. ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again bleakly. ‘It was breech and it was six weeks premature.’ He rolled his shirt-sleeves down, fastening his cuffs. ‘I’ve given Mrs Harland a sedative and I don’t think she will regain consciousness until she reaches the hospital. She’ll have to stay in for several days.’

  ‘Can I travel with her?’ Helena asked.

  The doctor nodded and then turned away from her towards the ambulancemen, giving them low terse instructions. Half an hour later, the small doll-like body of the baby, heavily swathed in white linen, was carried out of the house by an ambulanceman, and into the ambulance. Elizabeth was transferred next, her eyes closed, her hair tangled and damp, her skin bloodless.

  Helena turned towards Mei Lin. ‘Please telephone Mr Harland for me,’ she said tonelessly. ‘Tell him I’m accompanying Mrs Harland to the hospital. And tell him that the baby is dead, Mei Lin.’

  Mei Lin nodded. She had already telephoned Raffles Hotel in Singapore, leaving a message for Mr Elliot to telephone home immediately.

  ‘What shall I tell Mr Elliot when he telephones back, missy?’ she asked anxiously.

  Helena pushed a dark fall of hair away from her face. Singapore was sixteen hundred miles away. It would be days before he returned. He couldn’t be left for all that time thinking that he had become a father. ‘Tell him the truth,’ she said bleakly. ‘Tell him that Mrs Harland is in the maternity hospital in Victoria and that the baby is dead.’

  ‘Yes, missy,’ Mei Lin said unhappily, and then, as Helena followed Elizabeth’s stretcher to the door, she said: ‘Missy Harland will not die, will she, Missy Nicholson?’

  ‘No,’ Helena said thankfully. ‘Tell Mr Elliot that she will be all right, but that she will have to stay in the hospital for several days.’

  Mei Lin nodded, and Helena stepped out into the waning sunshine and crossed the flower-filled terrace to the waiting ambulance. It had been the baby that had prompted Elizabeth to leave Adam and go and live with Raefe. And now the baby was dead. As the ambulancemen closed the doors behind her, she wondered if the baby’s death would change anything. If perhaps now Elizabeth would return to Adam.

  The ambulance began to jolt over the stony track that led down to the coast road, and in the Moses basket near to her a shock of spiky black hair peeped from the tightly swathed sheeting. Tears stung Helena’s eyes. Raefe’s child and Elizabeth’s child. She didn’t even know its sex. She clasped her hands tightly in her lap, hoping fervently that Adam would be at the hospital and waiting for them when they arrived.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  There was an appalling few minutes as they approached the hospital and Elizabeth drowsily recovered consciousness. ‘My baby …,’ she murmured to Helena. ‘Where is my baby?’

  Helena had squeezed her hand tightly and wished to God that the doctor was with them to answer her, instead of following behind them in his own car.

  ‘The baby died, Elizabeth,’ she said gently. ‘I’m so sorry, darling. So very sorry.’

  She gave a long low cry, memory returning, and then she twisted her head sharply away, the tears falling unrestrainedly.

  Once at the hospital she had been transferred to a private room far away from the maternity ward and the healthy lusty cries of the newborn. An ambulanceman had carried the Moses basket into the hospital, but it did not reappear in Elizabeth’s room. Helena wondered where it had been taken and if they would ever see its lifeless dark-haired little occupant again.

  ‘I must ask you to leave now,’ a nurse said to her. ‘Mrs Harland needs medical attention, and the doctor is on his way to her.’

  Reluctantly Helena let go of Elizabeth’s hand. ‘I have to leave the room, Elizabeth, but I’ll only be outside, in the corridor.’

  Ever since their brief exchange of words in the ambulance, Elizabeth had kept her head averted from Helena. She now turned it slowly, her face deathly pale, her eyes bruised black with grief. ‘I want Raefe,’ she said simply.

  Helena felt her eyes sting with tears. ‘I’ll get him for you,’ she said thickly. God in heaven, what on earth had possessed him to leave for Singapore at a time like this? Mei Lin had said that he could be contacted at Raffles, but that didn’t mean that he would be resident there for the duration of his trip. If he was in Singapore on business, then he would most likely be visiting his rubber plantations up-country. Which meant that it could be days before he could be contacted, perhaps even a week or longer.

  Trying to get a long-distance telephone connection to Raffles from the telephone in the hospital foyer would be a near-impossible task, and she didn’t even attempt it. Instead she telephoned Alastair, telling him briefly what had happened and asking him to do his damnedest to get in touch with Raefe. Then, after only a moment’s hesitation, she dialled Adam’s number.

  He left for the hospital immediately. He had been pruning roses when she had telephoned, and the secateurs were still in his cardigan pocket, stray rose-clippings clinging about his person as he hurried limpingly up the hospital stairs and along the corridor to her room.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Harland is resting. No visitors are allowed for another twenty-four hours,’ the staff nurse on duty said primly.

  ‘Rubbish,’ Adam said, anxiety overcoming his customary good manners. ‘I’m her husband! I want to see her now. Immediately!’

  ‘Oh, of course. I’m sorry, Mr Harland,’ the staff nurse said, flustered. The ward sister had given her to understand that Mrs Harland’s husband was in Singapore and had still not been contacted. ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated. ‘I hadn’t realized your identity. You may see her for five minutes, but I must ask you not to stay a second longer. Normal visiting hours finished an hour ago. The night staff will be coming on duty in ten minutes’time. Please come this way.’

  Adam followed her into a dimly lit room, pity and rage and hope all striving for supremacy. His pity was deep and genuine. He knew how much Beth had longed for a child. He knew what her pregnancy had meant to her. And now it had all come to nothing.

  His rage was directed at Elliot. How could the man have left her when she was so near the end of her pregnancy? Helena had said that he was in Singapore on business. Adam very much doubted it He had heard rumours that Alute, the Malay girl Elliot had squired so openly and for so long, had left Hong Kong for Singapore. If she had, Adam could well imagine the purpose of Elliot’s visit. And if it wasn’t Alute, then it would be another woman. Elliot had never been renowned for faithfulness. Not to his wife; not to his girlfriends. And now, quite obviously, he was being unfaithful to Beth.

  A nerve jumped convulsively at the corner of his clenched jaws. Now, at last, Beth would know Elliot for what he was. A no-good rogue, incapable of deep feelings for her, or for anyone else. When she was strong enough to leave the hospital he would take her away, so that she could recuperate. They would go to Australia or New Zealand, or maybe even America. Hope intoxicated him. When Beth had needed Elliot, he had not been at her side. He, Adam, had been at her side. As he always would be.

  ‘Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry,’ he said huskily as he leaned over her, kissing her tenderly on her forehead, appalled at how white and exhausted she looked. ‘I’m so very, very sorry.’

  Elizabeth closed her eyes for a moment, summoning up what little strength remained to her. It was typical of Adam that, even though she had lost the child that had driven them so irrevocably apart, there was no underlying note of satisfaction in his voice. His sympathy was sincere and deep. His generous compassionate nature would have been incapable of anything less. Yet she didn’t want his commiserations. She wanted Raefe, and Raefe was still hours, perhaps even days, away from her.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Adam,’ she said, forcing a small smile. ‘It was very sweet of you.’

  ‘Sweet of me, be damned,’ he said thickly, sitting down on the chair beside the bed and taking her h
and. ‘You can’t think that I would leave you on your own at a time like this?’

  ‘Helena has been with me,’ she said tiredly, touched as she always was by his loving concern for her. There were deep shadows beneath her eyes, and her voice was so weak he could barely hear her.

  ‘You need to rest,’ he said gruffly. ‘You’re in no condition even to talk. I’ll come back in the morning and we’ll discuss where you can go to recuperate. New Zealand, perhaps, or maybe America.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said wearily, ‘New Zealand would be nice.’ She closed her eyes. New Zealand and Raefe. Perhaps they could make another baby there. Perhaps, with Raefe, the agonizing hurt would heal.

  Adam rose heavily to his feet. She was already asleep. He looked down at her long and tenderly, and then he turned and walked slowly from the room. He would be there when she awoke. He had no intention of returning to the Peak, not even for a change of clothes. If there was nowhere he could stay in the hospital, then he would check into one of the nearby hotels. If he was needed, he would be with her within minutes.

  Helena was waiting in the hospital corridor. ‘How is she?’ she asked as she stepped towards him.

  ‘Exhausted,’ he said, grateful for her presence. ‘I’m going to ask if I can stay at the hospital tonight. If not, then I’ll book into one of the nearby hotels. Either way, I’ll be here within minutes if she should need me.’

  Helena looked at him oddly. ‘I don’t think they will let you sleep here …,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I don’t think they would even let Raefe sleep here.’

  ‘My God! I should hope not!’ Adam said explosively. ‘If I had my way, the bastard wouldn’t even be allowed in to see her!’

  Helena took his arm. ‘Elizabeth isn’t the only one who needs a good night’s sleep,’ she said firmly. ‘You’ve under-gone a long period of stress, Adam. If you won’t return home, then at least book into a hotel. Trying to sleep on a couple of chairs in one of the hospital waiting-rooms isn’t at all a good idea. And it isn’t necessary.’

  ‘I’m going to take her away,’ he said as she led him down the corridor towards the stairs. ‘New Zealand or America. Somewhere she can forget the last few months and we can start again.’

  Helena swung her head sharply towards him. ‘Have you told her that?’ she asked incredulously. ‘Has she agreed?’

  He looked at her in surprise. ‘Why, yes, of course. She said New Zealand would be nice,’ he said, as they began to walk down the brightly lit stairs.

  Helena stared at him helplessly. Despite his greying hair and his now pronounced limp, he still had the deep-chested chunky build of a useful-looking middleweight yet there was a naïvety and a vulnerability about him that aroused all her protective instincts. She didn’t for one minute believe that the death of her child had altered Elizabeth’s feelings for Raefe. Whatever Elizabeth had said to him about New Zealand he had surely misunderstood.

  ‘Don’t make any plans, Adam,’ she said gently. ‘Not until she has seen Raefe. It would be fatal.’

  Her hand had been resting lightly on his arm, and he pulled himself away from her, saying savagely: ‘For a sensible woman, you can be very obtuse, Helena! She won’t want to see Elliot! Why should she? He’s let her down in the most awful way that a man can let a woman down! Whatever might once have existed between them, it’s over now!’ And he swung away from her, hurrying out of the hospital foyer and into the forecourt, the secateurs still bulging incongruously in his cardigan pocket.

  Helena sighed and pushed her hair away from her face. It was no use going after him. Whatever she said, he wouldn’t listen. She pushed her hands deep into the pockets of her skirt and was halfway to the hospital carpark before she remembered that her Morgan was not there, but miles away, parked beside tubs of geraniums and carnations and sweet-smelling stocks.

  Wearily she altered direction, walking towards the street. She would have to get a taxi. And even when she arrived home there would be little comfort awaiting her. Alastair was on duty and wouldn’t be able to see her until the end of the week. The children would be in bed. She scanned the street, looking for the familiar light of a taxicab. If Adam had been sensible, they could have enjoyed a meal together and a reviving drink. But he hadn’t been sensible, and she was tired and on her own.

  ‘Damn!’ she said bad-temperedly to the world at large as a taxi finally slid to a halt beside her. ‘Why does a man who is so nice have to be so pathetically idiotic?’ There was no answer, and she climbed dispiritedly into the cab, unhappily aware that the main cause for her depression was not the death of Elizabeth’s baby, or Alastair’s unavoidable absence. It was something far more disturbing. Adam’s stubborn belief that he and Elizabeth were on the point of reconciliation.

  The next morning, when Elizabeth awoke, her room was full of flowers. ‘Your husband sent them,’ the nurse who took her pulse and checked her blood pressure said. ‘Aren’t they gorgeous?’

  They were, but Elizabeth was still unclear whether the sender had been Adam or Raefe. If it had been Raefe, then it meant that he knew what had happened, and was on his way to her side.

  ‘Is there a card with them?’ she asked, pushing herself slowly into a sitting position.

  The nurse beamed and passed one across to her. It read simply: ‘From Adam, with love.’

  She put it down on the counterpane. She should have known that if Helena or Mei Lin had succeeded in contacting Raefe he would not have wasted time in thinking of flowers. He would have slammed the telephone receiver down on the rest and left immediately for the airport She thought of him hearing the news in a distant impersonal hotel bedroom, and her heart twisted in anguish. ‘Oh, my sweet love,’ she whispered. ‘Hurry back so that I can comfort you. So that we can comfort each other.…’

  When the doctor came to see her he stayed with her a long time, making sure she understood that there was no reason why she should not, in the future, bear healthy children. She had been grateful for his kindness but she had not wanted to think of other, as yet unborn children. She wanted only to grieve for the child she had lost. When he had gone, she had lain weakly back against the pillows and cried and cried, and the doctor, when a member of the nursing staff told him of her reaction, had nodded with satisfaction. Tears were far healthier than silent numbed grief. ‘She’s going to be all right,’ he said prophetically. ‘She’s a much tougher little lassie than she looks.’

  Adam came in to see her the minute he was allowed to do so. The ward sister had told him of her tears, and that they were not only perfectly natural, but also healthily therapeutic.

  ‘What she really needs is rest,’ she had said. ‘Please don’t overtire her by staying with her for too long.’

  Her hair was down around her shoulders, making her look ridiculously young. She had dried her tears, but her face was still pale and there were dark shadows beneath her eyes.

  ‘Did you sleep, sweetheart?’ he asked, sitting down beside her, pulling the chair as near to the bed as he possibly could.

  ‘Yes.’ She had been given sedatives and painkillers, and her sleep had been deep and unnatural. A faint smile touched her mouth. ‘You’re still wearing your gardening cardigan, Adam. Where on earth did you spend the night?’

  He grinned sheepishly. ‘I didn’t like to travel back home, in case you needed me. I slept the night round the corner, at the club.’

  ‘Oh, Adam,’ she said, a catch in her voice, ‘you’re the kindest person I know.’

  She had said the same thing to him scores of times before. When she was a little girl; when he had comforted her after Jerome’s death. When they had been happy together at Four Seasons. Hope for the future surged through him. ‘You’ll be out of here within ten days to two weeks,’ he said, euphoric at once more making plans with her, once more contemplating a future together. ‘We can leave straight away for New Zealand. The doctor says you’ll be perfectly strong enough.’

  She stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘I’m sorry, Adam. I
don’t understand.…’

  ‘I’m taking you to New Zealand to recuperate,’ he reminded her tenderly.

  Her eyes widened, a new expression coming into them, but before he could understand it there came the sound of an angry altercation in the corridor.

  ‘Mrs Harland’s husband is with her at present!’ the ward sister was protesting indignantly. ‘Only husbands are allowed to visit so early in the day!’

  There came the sound of a deep dismissive reply, and then the door flew open and Elizabeth cried, ‘Raefe!’ the sound seeming to come from her very soul. Her arms were outstretched and, even as Adam stumbled, disconcerted, to his feet, Raefe strode to her side, crushing her in his arms.

  The ward sister ran into the room, saying: ‘Only husbands are allowed.…’ And then stood stock-still, her eyes wide with disbelief at the sight of Adam, standing futilely by, while his wife was kissed with demented passion by the man who had just stormed into the room.

  ‘Oh, my love!’ he whispered fiercely against her hair as she clung to him. ‘Oh, my sweet, sweet love!’

  Adam blundered towards the door. He knew now what expression had been in her eyes in the last few seconds before Elliot had burst in on them. It had been horror at the enormity of his assumption. And pity.

  ‘Mr Harland!’ the sister cried. ‘What is happening? I don’t understand!’

  Adam pushed uncaringly past her. He understood. He had seen Beth’s face as Elliot strode towards her, and it had been transfigured with an expression of such love that he had hardly been able to breathe. Never, in all the years they had lived together, had he seen her look at him like that. He couldn’t even conceive of it. He staggered out into the corridor. Finally, and at long last, he understood. She was never going to come back to him. It was over. Finished.

  A Junoesque figure was running down the corridor towards him, dark hair cascading untidily round a beautifully boned, expressive face. ‘Adam! Oh my God! Are you all right, Adam?’ He allowed her to seize hold of his arm, to take some of his weight. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked urgently. ‘Is it Elizabeth? Is she dead?’