But while she found she could discipline her thoughts about Heath most of the time, on-other occasions, especially when she was spending a lonely evening in an impersonal hotel or on a late-night flight, he came back to haunt her with such startling clarity that she always caught her breath and had to fight back the tears.
It was the little things she sometimes thought she would never forget. His sometimes crazy sense of humour, the night she had lain in his arms and soothed him to sleep with poetry, how strong his arms had been when she had tried evade them …
And when she was very tired, the thought that haunted her most of all. Had it been only pride, stubborn unforgivable pride, that had stopped her from taking what he had offered?
She had written to Brent soon after she had started work again and had tried to explain how things had worked out; and in reply she had received two dozen red roses and a renewed offer of marriage from him. But with a Jet-out clause that had bothered her very much. For he had said, if the answer was still no, not to write, and if he didn’t hear from her before he was due to leave New Guinea, he would proceed straight overseas where the final editing of the series would take place.
Sasha knew he had done it this way to save her embarrassment, but all the same she felt as if she was being let off too lightly. And she often pictured him in places like Madang and Kokoda and Port Moresby, and even went so far as to put pen to paper a couple of times only to think then—no, maybe his way is the best way.
So it came as a complete surprise nearly three months later one afternoon when she stepped out of the lift and fumbled in her bag for the key to her flat to look up and see the tall figure of Brent Havelock standing beside her doorway.
‘Brent!’ she exclaimed.
‘Hello, Sasha.’
‘Oh, Brent, it’s so good to see you!’
‘You too, Sasha.’ He enveloped her in a bear-hug and then stood her at arm’s length. ‘You don’t look well,’ he said concernedly.
‘I’ve been very busy lately,’ she said with a grimace. ‘But come inside and tell me all—no, let me put the kettle on first, then you must tell me everything. I’m d-dying to know!’
He told her over tea and a snack she had prepared.
‘Of course, ratings are the one sure guide to the success or failure of something like this but the sponsors seem to be delighted with it,’ he finished and grinned at her.
‘I’m so glad,’ she said simply. ‘What will you do now?’ she asked as she handed him a plate of sandwiches.
He took a cucumber sandwich and toyed with it for a while, not looking at her. Then he said abruptly, “That rather depends on you, Sasha. I’ve come to renew my offer, you see.’
I should have known this was coming, she thought stupidly. I should have been prepared. What can I say?
Brent lifted his eyes suddenly and their glances locked for a small eternity before he said quietly, ‘I see. Nothing’s changed, has it?’
‘I don’t know,’ she hoarsely at last.
‘Yes, you do, Sasha,’ he said gently. ‘You’re just as much in love with Heath as ever, aren’t you?’
She moved restlessly. ‘I don’t know why. If I had any sense I wouldn’t be.’
‘Is it still Veronica?’
‘No,’ she said bleakly.
‘He might just as well be blind,’ he said roughly and with so much suppressed emotion that she blinked.
‘But you said yourself, these are the things you can’t change, Brent.’
‘I said a lot of things,’ he replied impatiently. ‘What I didn’t say was perhaps the most important. It’s hell living without you, Sasha! But then I guess I don’t have to explain that to you. No,’ he added almost immediately, ‘don’t look so stricken.’ He leant forward and took her face between his hands. ‘I’ll survive and so will you, my dear. Just remember that the offer’s still open if ever you want it…’
And half an hour later he was gone.
But for days afterwards Sasha was still shaken by the encounter and full of guilt and inwardly directed mockery.
And then in the midst of all these recriminations— Edith.
She was standing beside Sasha’s front door just as Brent had done, late one afternoon, and looking particularly severe.
‘Edith? Is something wrong?’
‘Yes, Sasha,’ Edith said gruffly, and bent forward to kiss her on the cheek. ‘You look pale, dear. Haven’t you been eating properly?’
‘No—I mean yes. I mean, what is it? Dad?’ Sasha asked shakily.
‘It’s nothing like that,’ Edith said briskly. ‘Are you going to invite me in?’
‘Oh. Of course.’ Sasha fumbled for her key and unlocked the door. ‘You gave me a fright,’ she said as she ushered Edith into the living room, took her hat and coat and steered her to a chair. ‘Would you like something to drink?’
‘Not yet, Sasha,’ Edith said abruptly. ‘I’ve got something to tell you, and it won’t be easy. Best off for me just to say my piece. Sit down.’
This was so much like the old, authoritative Edith that Sasha did as she was commanded with a faint grin. ‘I’m ready.’
‘It’s Heath, Sasha. He’s in love with you and has been for a long time. And now he’s eating his heart out for you. As I suspect you might be for him,’ added Edith with a piercing look.
For a moment Sasha wondered if she was going mad, had slipped into a world of fantasy. But there was nothing dreamlike or even faintly unreal about the uncompromising figure of Edith West sitting opposite her, and she tried to speak, but no words would come.
‘It’s true, Sasha. And what’s more, I’ve known it for a long time.’
‘But how?’ Sasha asked weakly, at last.
‘Well, in the first place, the one person he wanted to know about as soon as he got home was you. Where you were, what you were doing, how he could get in touch with you. And … well, I showed him that article about you and Brent, and, God forgive me, Sasha, told him that I had high hopes of you two getting married.’
‘You did that?’ Sasha whispered.
‘Yes, I did.’ Edith looked strangely uncomfortable and for the first time her composure slipped a little. ‘Sasha, I have to explain some things to you. I’m a crabby old spinster—I suppose that would be the best way to describe myself. And if there’s anything more upsetting to someone like myself than someone like Heath—well, I can’t think what it would be. He’s rubbed me up the wrong way since I first laid eyes on him. It’s a combination of a lot of things, I suppose, of seeing the way he treated women, seeing the way they reacted to him like a lot of blind, silly sheep,’ she said contemptuously, then sighed suddenly. ‘And if I’m honest, I suppose I have to admit, a sort of longing for my youth and perhaps another chance to take a different road.’
Sasha was struck speechless. Edith had not looked at her during her speech but concentrated on an imaginary loose thread in her skirt. Now she lifted her head and stared levelly across at Sasha.
‘There’s something else,’ she said quietly. ‘I knew you had …’ She shrugged and looked suddenly awkward.
‘Had a crush on Heath?’ Sasha queried dryly. ‘It seems everyone knew. I must have been very gauche.’
‘No. Only very young,’ Edith said gently. ‘So you see,’ she went on, ‘when he came home and was so set on finding you, I thought to myself, oh no, Heath Townsend, she’s got herself over you, found herself someone else perhaps, and I’m not going to let you start wreaking havoc with her heart again. And that’s why I did what I did, Sasha.’
‘Well, but…’
‘But there’s more,’ Edith went on. ‘The very same day I showed him the article was the day he saw the neuro-surgeon and found out that the operation he’d had might not have been successful.’
‘You mean he didn’t know until then?
‘No. But as soon as he found out, that’s when he started to make plans to leave again. That’s when I got onto Doctor James and begged him to find out exac
tly what the neuro-surgeon had said.’
Something clicked into place in Sasha’s mind. ‘I always wondered why he came home in the first place,’ she said dazedly. ‘I didn’t know, but I thought … I remember thinking that surely he could have arranged his business from overseas.’
‘Exactly,’ Edith said sombrely. ‘And perhaps you can imagine the dilemma I found myself in then. I knew I couldn’t let him go, that Stephanie would never forgive me, but I also knew / couldn’t keep him home. And in a sense that I’d been hoist with my own petard because you were probably the only person who could.’
‘But look, I don’t see …’ Sasha began confusedly.
‘Blossom, I didn’t see for a while and then I refused to admit it, but the reason why he was so set on going again was because it was your life he didn’t want to wreck—on two counts, because of what I’d told him about Brent Havelock, but even without that, because it was you he wouldn’t inflict a blind man on.’
Sasha gazed at Edith helplessly. ‘How can you be so sure?’ she whispered.
Edith sighed. ‘Because more and more clearly I could see the torture it was for him, living in the same house with you. I saw the way he looked at you when he didn’t know I was watching. Why do you think I wasn’t much surprised when he sent that Gardiner woman packing! Why do you think I was so wary when he suggested that false engagement and downright apprehensive when you took him off to your home? My dear, between us, we placed Heath in an impossible situation. And—well, I can only take my hat off to him for not… cracking. Which only makes me sure that he really cares about you, Sasha, as he’s never cared for another woman.’
‘But why didn’t he tell me!’ Sasha cried. ‘He could have…’
‘Could he?’ Edith said wisely. ‘Did you ever tell him about Mr Havelock? Did you ever explain that to him?’
Sasha stood up defensively and then moved across to the window.
‘You didn’t, did you, Sasha?’
‘No.’
‘Sasha, you and Heath are made for each other. Only a blind man or someone like myself wouldn’t have realised that. Please…. think about it at least.’
Think about it, Sasha. Why can’t I think about it? she wondered as she stared down at the busy street below. She leant her head against the pane of glass, but nothing came, other than a solid sense of disbelief.
‘… Sasha?’
With a sigh she turned back to Edith. ‘I will think about it,’ she promised.
Edith stared at her searchingly. ‘I can only ask you to forgive me too, dear,’ she said gruffly.
‘Oh, Edith!’ Sasha went forward swiftly and knelt down beside the older woman’s chair. ‘What’s to forgive?’ she said gently.
‘You’re such a pet, Sasha,’ said Edith, and sniffed. Then she added tentatively, ‘He’s gone away for a holiday. To the Barrier Reef.’ She named an island and looked at Sasha expectantly.
‘I’ll … think about it,’ said Sasha, unaware that her voice lacked conviction so that Edith winced inwardly but came to a sudden decision not to labour her point.
Instead she said wryly, ‘So much emotion! I could do with that drink now.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was a poster in a travel agency’s window that finally started Sasha thinking. She saw it the day after Edith’s visit.
‘Come to the beautiful Whitsunday Passage-Gateway to the Great Barrier Reef!’ it said, and below were the almost lifesize figures of a man and a woman walking away into the sun, hand in hand on a smooth golden beach and with droplets of moisture still on their bodies.
Sasha hesitated, then turned back and walked into the agency and some time later came out clutching an air ticket and a hotel reservation slip in a small plastic folder—and a feeling of panic rising in her throat as well as a large hole in her cheque account.
‘Suppose Edith is wrong?’ she murmured as she made her way along the pavement crowded with lunch time shoppers. ‘It’s not impossible. In fact it’s highly probable …’
It was the curious looks of several passers-by that reminded her it was a sign of madness to talk out loud to oneself, and she took a strong hold on herself.
But the passionate debate continued in her mind for the next few days as the weekend approached inexorably, and half a dozen times she reached for the telephone to cancel her flight. If Heath did feel as Edith claimed he did, why had he almost urged Brent to marry her without waiting? And why, once the threat of blindness had been removed, hadn’t he at least told her then? Instead of asking her to marry him because she’d be good for him…? And on and on it went, until she felt sick and dizzy.
Then her employer took an unexpected hand. He looked at her thoughtfully on Friday afternoon and said she looked peaky, and seeing that Parliament wasn’t sitting, why didn’t she take the next week off and get herself a tan on some nice northern beach?
The coincidence of this seemed rather funny to her, because she could get a tan in Sydney too. But when she mentioned this he merely shrugged and said that a clean break from one’s home town often did wonders for jaded bodies and minds, and he personally found nothing more relaxing than Queensland and the Barrier Reef, which he made a point of visiting every year.
Sasha had stared at him, momentarily transfixed, and found herself wondering if this was fate. A sign that she should go. Then she chided herself for being fanciful. Her fate was in her own hands, and if she did go, it would be because she herself had made the decision.
And she found that this was a strangely sustaining thought. Anyway, it sustained her sufficiently to climb aboard the aircraft on Saturday morning, but by the time she was halfway to Proserpine in Central Queensland, which was the jumping off point for the Whitsundays, she was again sick with fear and panic and quite certain that what she was doing would only re-open all the old wounds.
But by that time there was also a certain inevitability about it too, she found. ,
The plane touched down smoothly and she climbed out into the bright, warm humidity. There was a short wait and then she climbed into a helicopter and was whisked across a veritable paradise. Because as the tall cane fields of the mainland and the wooded, hilly coastline around Airlie Beach and Shute Harbour dropped away, a panorama of sparkling, placid waters studded with islands and coral atolls topped with dense green foliage and rimmed with white sands opened up below.
It was so beautiful Sasha caught her breath and for a while even forgot her problems as she drank it all in. And to top it off, the pilot spotted a whale in the blue of the water and circled around it.
Then they were coming down on one of the islands— the one on which according to Edith, Heath was staying—and all Sasha’s doubts and misery came back to plague her.
The resort offered several different types of accommodation. Sasha had booked a room in the main building, but there were also self-contained bungalows scattered around the island that were far more private, and she thought that Heath would probably have chosen one of these, because his was still a familiar face.
But she couldn’t be sure, and when she was finally in the privacy of her own room, she was struck by another thought which appalled her. Perhaps he wasn’t alone? And she wondered distractedly why she hadn’t thought of this earlier. Wasn’t it bad enough that she’d heeded what were, after all, only Edith’s suppositions without thinking of this possibility?
She sank down on to the bed and closed her eyes, conscious of one desire, and that was to escape. But of course it wasn’t that simple to get off an island at a moment’s notice.
‘I’ll just have to pretend it’s a coincidence, my being here,’ she murmured. ‘That’s all I can do!’
She sighed heavily and lay back on the bed. Outside, long shadows were creeping across the forecourt as the sun sank towards the horizon and for a time she just lay there, her mind numb and blank. Then, imperceptibly, she drifted off to sleep.
When she woke she didn’t know where she was for a moment. It was pitch da
rk. She reached out a hand experimentally and found the shape of a lamp. She flicked it on, and immediately it all came back to her.
She glanced at her watch and with a wry grimace realised she had slept nearly twelve hours straight, fully clothed and curled up on the counterpane.
She stretched and then sat up and slid off the bed and crossed to the window. She could hear the murmur of the sea and the first faint twittering of birds which told her that dawn must be approaching, and she thought suddenly that this was the safest hour for her. Whatever else she did today, she could at least go down to the beach for a walk now and watch the sunrise, which was what her senses were clamouring for. She found she was in a fever to do it, so she changed hastily into her bikini, wrapped a colourful sarong about her, washed her face and brushed her hair and bunched it on top of her head, then slipped out of her room.
The building was very quiet and only dimly lit. And conveniently, the path over the dune and down to the beach was also discreetly lit at intervals. And as she came over the dune, she saw the first faint rim of light on the horizon.
It was an enchanting dawn that greeted her eyes as the darkness lessened and the bird chorus grew and the sea and the beach were washed with a living pink. It also gave her the feeling that she was the only person on the planet, and a cautious glance around seemed to confirm this. There was not another living soul in sight.
And the sea looked so inviting! Like a great lake with only small wavelets breaking on the sand because of the coral reef protection that made all these waterways so placid.
Her hands came up to the knot of her sarong at the same time as she knew she couldn’t resist the temptation of the water, and she dropped it where she stood and ran down to the water’s edge to wade in eagerly and then dive into its strangely warm, silky depths.
She wasn’t sure how long she swam and floated, but eventually the sun itself was peeping over the horizon and she knew regretfully that it was time to come out.
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