by YatesNZ, Jen
Settled enough to keep asking for Fran.
The thought slipped in like an insidious snake slithering through grass. And all Fran worried about was Gould. As if they'd both forgotten she was Gould's live-in partner, not Fran. She'd made excuses in her mind, kept silent because they were ill, told herself she owed Gould loyalty, even taken an inverted kind of pride in her ability to function on a level removed from the reality of their tangled relationships.
From the reality of her anger.
She began pulling the paper cup off the muffin. Suddenly it was a mess of crumbs in her clenched fist. Carefully, slowly, she opened her fingers and brushed the mangled bun onto the plate. For a long time she sat staring at it, hands clenched in her lap to stop them from trembling. God! She was so angry she was like to fly apart. Sitting absolutely still, she had the oddest impression of clinically observing the effect of the fury on her system. As if she stood aside from herself, watching through an x-ray machine.
Her eyes were wide, staring, hot, and dry. It didn't feel as if she could close them if she tried. Her skin prickled all over her body but by far the most amazing sensation was the fountaining of a white hot, lava-like emotion deep in her belly. Seething upwards, it churned, searing its way through her vitals and pouring through her heart with the scorching delicacy of a gas torch through steel. With slow-dawning horror she realized she was going to be sick. Glancing feverishly round she thankfully located a washroom sign and bolted for it.
As she leaned weakly against the toilet wall a woman's voice called, ‘You all right, luv?’
Georgina moaned.
‘Feeling poorly, luv?’
The assistant who'd served her only moments before peered concernedly round the door. Georgina shook her head.
‘I'll be all right now, I think.—Thanks.’
‘Anything I can get you?’
‘No thanks. I'll be okay.’
‘You pregnant, luv?’
Georgina jerked off the wall and stared at the woman for a brief second of panic, then subsided back with a shaky laugh.
‘Hell! You trying to make me sick all over again? No, I'm not pregnant—just—’ But the habit of emotional silence was impossible to break round a stranger. Dragging in a deep calming breath, she continued, ‘—I'm okay now. I'll be out in a minute. Perhaps you could keep an eye on my wallet. I left it on the seat.’
‘Sure thing, luv.’
Got a knife, luv? I feel like killing someone!
God! Crossing to the basin Georgina splashed handfuls of water on her face until her blood began to cool.
She'd become so good at hiding her emotions she'd hidden them even from herself. Back at the table she sat drawing circles in the muffin crumbs with a teaspoon. Her hand shook. Her blood still fizzed like a trounced bottle of champagne. If either Fran or Gould were with her now she'd stab them with—a teaspoon? There was nothing else to hand!
That took care of loyalty. With a shuddering sigh she leant back in her chair and gazed out the window, her mind flashing back to her reaction when the woman had suggested she might be pregnant. She'd at once felt grateful yet ineffably sad in the certainty of her denial. She wasn't meant to carry Gould's child just as she hadn't conceived with Gotham but her longing to carry and hold in her arms a baby fathered by Torr Montgomery was a desperate hungering in her soul. The smell of the rapidly cooling coffee made her feel nauseous again. So did the realization she needed to confront both Gould and Fran with their perfidy and then—then—
She'd go for a walk in the hospital gardens and hopefully calm down. By three o'clock Georgina thought she could probably draw a detailed map of the gardens and identify every plant by its botanical name with her eyes shut. But she did feel a little calmer and ready to—what was it Case had said? Hurl a few missiles of her own? Take control of her life?
Starting back along the pathway she entered the foyer and took the lift up to the ward set aside for the crew members of the ‘Astrid’.
‘Did Mr. Valois get away all right?’ Janet, the duty nurse, asked when Georgina stopped to check in.
Case had become a firm favorite with everyone on the ward and Georgina chatted for a moment with the young woman before asking how Gould and Fran were.
‘I believe they've both been out on the balcony briefly today. Ms. Hackville isn't as settled as she was yesterday though. Threw a bit of a tantrum when the doctor said they couldn't go out for more than ten minutes. He explained to her that though sunlight is very healing, too much at this point would be as damaging as the original burn. She was inclined to be a bit irrational but—your Mr. Barrington seems able to settle her down.’ The nurse smiled apologetically, then added, ‘After the way they were raving when they were first brought in here though, I guess we've a lot to be thankful for.’
Georgina's mind had cut off at the point where she'd mentioned ‘your Mr. Barrington’ and was following a tangent of its own. How had Gould settled Fran down? Was there an unwillingness in the nurse to look at her when she spoke of Gould and Fran? With their public personas they had the most to lose from a scandal.
Hadn't that occurred to them? At any stage? Didn't it bother them? Eight months ago Torr had asked her to go away with him and she'd refused because of the scandal it would cause and the effect it could have on them and their careers. She'd wasted eight months of her life for a principle her partner and her sister obviously hadn't considered at all!
‘Yes, um, thanks. I'll go along and see Gould now.’
Fingers clenched round her wallet, she strode off down the hall, hoping ‘yes’ had been the right answer to whatever Janet had been saying.
When she passed Fran's room the curtains were drawn so presumably her sister was resting. In any case she'd decided she needed to talk with Gould first. There'd been little communication between them. His face had been heavily bandaged until the last couple of days and he'd been unable to talk. She'd always told him when she was present and slipped her hand into his and he'd clung tightly, sometimes making little grunting noises. Yesterday, with the bandages off he'd recognized her and spoken her name and some other words among which she'd distinguished ‘thanks’ and ‘sorry’. Had he been trying to apologize?
Did he, like Gotham, think an apology wiped the slate clean? Would she, when confronting him, become the old tongue-tied Georgina? With her hand on his door she stopped, closed her eyes and silently invoked the essence of Gynevra. The woman within her skin at this moment needed to be strong, articulate and confident, qualities she'd had in that ancient lifetime. Lifting her chin and straightening her spine, she pushed the door open.
Gould lay apparently asleep, the raw disfigured side of his head uncovered. The doctors had been reassuring that with plastic surgery his original looks would be largely restored but it was hard to equate this misshapen ugliness with the handsome man whose thick blond curly hair and intelligent laughing blue eyes had captivated her crippled heart nearly three years ago.
Just as hard as it had been for her to accept his double-dealing with her sister.
It was he, in the early days of their relationship, who'd worked so hard to get her to acknowledge and verbalize her emotions, he who'd said they had to be honest with one another. It had been no hardship for her to fall back into her old habits but when had he decided to let her? What had happened to his much-vaunted honesty?
Standing by the bed gazing down at him she tried to call back the overwhelming anger that had assailed her in the cafeteria earlier. To her consternation all she felt was a deep sorrow for the cruel disfigurement, and compassion, or was it love? Whatever it was had sapped all the venom from her fury, leaving her once again groping for words to describe her feelings.
He stirred and his eyes opened a little.
‘Hi, Georgi,’ he rasped. ‘Case gone—‘kay?’
‘Yes.’
‘What—been doing—since then?’
Putting her wallet on the bedside cabinet, Georgina turned to look out the window. For
a long moment she gazed out at the distant ocean, two ships on the horizon, yachts lying into the wind near the shore and sail-boarders skimming across the water like birds. All of her life she'd longed for that kind of freedom within herself. All her life she'd been emotionally crippled by a basic inability to verbalize her inner being. The man in the bed had been her crutch, had tried to teach her to walk unaided, as it were.
And she could. She could run, even fly over water like those sail-boarders. Abruptly she turned and dropped into the chair by the bed.
‘Evading emotional stuff like I've always done.’
‘What—d'you mean?’ he asked reaching a hand towards her, his good eye clouded with concern.
Georgina took his hand in hers and felt the gearing of her anger slip another notch. Gould had given her so much. How could she berate him for taking from her something that she no longer wanted anyway?
With a sigh that seemed to come from deep in her gut she asked, ‘When were you going to tell me you'd fallen in love with Fran?’
His good eye closed briefly. The other with its lid and lashes burned away, twitched.
‘When—I was sure—I had. Didn't want—to hurt you—unnecessarily.’ His fingers tightened their grip round hers. ‘Sorry, Georgi.’
Tears welled in his good eye and Georgina tried to steel herself against pity with the thought he'd intended to come back to her after an affair with Fran if that was all it had proved to be. But her anger seemed to have spent all its violence earlier and all she had now was the harmless fizz. Relinquishing his hand, she clasped her own in her lap and sank back into the chair.
‘Eight months ago Torr Montgomery asked me to go away with him and I refused—because of the scandal it would cause basically. How pathetic does that make me?’
Gould's eyes were suddenly very blue, very wide open.
‘You?’ he croaked. ‘And Montgomery? Why?’
‘Why?’ Georgina almost laughed but a peculiar pain round her heart stole her mirth. ‘Why does a man ask a woman to go away with him?’
‘But—you hardly—knew h-him.’
‘You hardly knew Fran yet you were consoling her happily behind my back.’
‘That was—d-different—’ he began, then stopped with a shame-faced grimace.
‘Was it?’ Georgina asked softly.
Dark color flooded the pale cheeks and his mouth and hands began to agitate but he couldn't formulate an answer.
‘I stayed loyal to our relationship because I loved you. I didn't understand how I could want Torr too. I felt that made me a whore and I sent him away. But—you and Fran—’
‘Do you—love him?’
‘I don't know! What's love, Gould? I thought we were in love. How can I be in love with Torr? How do I know? How do you know you're in love with Fran? How does anyone know? What guarantee is there that someone else won't come along in a year or two and I'll want to go off with them? How do I know he won't fall out of love with me? And in love with Fran? That's what I don't understand, Gould! How do you know? How do you know your sister won't come along and steal the man you love from right under your nose?’
Chapter 38
A shudder of something cold and ancient rippled down her spine. Starting a little, she leant forward in the chair, hands clenched and eyes wide open. But it seemed the harder she stared the less she saw. The plaster walls in egg-shell blue drifted away and even the bed before her where Gould lay faded into nothingness.
As quickly and dreamily, she was in another room, another time. The massive slab rock walls were draped with woven hangings in turquoise, cream and terracotta, the room little more than a cell. A carved agricola bed inlaid with silver and gold stood against the wall, piled with brightly woven wool quilts and fine linen clagren.
Phryne, green eyes shooting darts of venom, was screaming at her.
‘You—went out of body with him while—while he was kurning me on the altar? You stole my Goddess essence the very first time?’
Instinctively Georgina raised her arm to ward off the sharp slap she knew was coming.
‘Georgi? Wha's—wrong?’
Gould's damaged voice dispelled the vision, its edges so clear drawn she felt she could have touched them, and once again she was sitting in the brightly lit hospital room.
‘Nothing,’ she muttered with a shudder. ‘It's nothing.’
Struggling into a sitting position, Gould leant across and grasped her wrist.
‘I didn't—mean to hurt—you, Georgi.—I'm—sorry.’ His body began to shake and his eyes to roll in his head. ‘They—they're coming—again—the aliens—they're coming—’
Rising swiftly, Georgina pulled his trembling body against hers and leant across and pressed the bell. Settling herself beside him on the bed, she rocked and talked soothingly until the nurse came to give him a shot. Every one of the crew of the ‘Astrid’ talked of the ‘aliens’ from time to time but it was always when they were upset and irrational. No one had tried to question them yet for memory alone seemed enough to set off what they'd all begun to call the ‘panic attacks’ which started with trembling and rational, though disjointed speech, and rapidly escalated into full-scale violent dementia.
As always, staff were only minutes away. They all knew the scale of violence could quickly become dangerous. Nurse Bailey hurried into the room with Dr. Raymond following.
‘It's only just started,’ Georgina said immediately. ‘I'm all right holding him.’
The injection was quickly administered, the nurse left and Dr. Raymond took the chair where Georgina had been sitting and began talking brightly about the delicious beef stew he'd smelt cooking when he came past the kitchens and speculating on whether the baked vegetables would be nicely browned and crisp or overdone and soggy. Gradually Gould calmed and slumped back onto his pillows.
‘What set this one off?’ Paul Raymond asked quietly.
‘I'm afraid I did,’ Georgina said heavily, watching Gould, who still appeared to be gazing at her from his lidless eye even though the drug had already closed his mind. Gently she leant across him to retrieve the eye-patch from his nightstand and slip it over his head. Then she turned to face the doctor.
‘And I'm probably going to set my sister off too, shortly.’
The doctor said nothing, just cocked one brow in question, and waited.
Georgina swallowed, dredged words into her mind, discarded them and searched for more. Hell! Were there any right or wrong words to tell how it was between the three of them?
‘I know—I've got to try and tell you this—this stuff,’ she stumbled, ‘because it could have an impact on their—health. But I've never been good at talking—hell, either one of them could do it ten times better than me—’
‘Which is why you are the one doing it,’ Paul Raymond said gently. ‘You probably have the most to gain by it.’
Georgina glared at him for a moment then sighed.
‘The irony of it is not lost on me,’ she admitted. Then muttered, ‘I don't know where the hell to start.’
‘The beginning is usually best. And Georgina, a doctor hears many things during the course of his work. Where there are people there are dramas. Try not to worry about what I'm going to think. It's not my job to judge. You're just giving me facts that might be pertinent to the well-being of my patients.’ He sent her a benign smile. ‘In the beginning?’
‘In the beginning—’ Georgina paused and dragged in a deep lungful of air. ‘—Fran came home to New Zealand with her fiancé to introduce him to our family. That was in August. Her fiancé was Torr.’
Occasionally Paul Raymond asked a question to clarify a point but mostly he just listened, his head cocked to one side, his kindly grey eyes thoughtful. Georgina skirted the ancient connection, giving the doctor enough bare facts to explain the tangled relationships in the present.
At last she said, with an uncharacteristic touch of defiance, ‘I feel I've waited long enough but—I can't sort anything with Torr until I've so
rted it with Gould and Fran.’
‘Do you make a habit of beating yourself up?’
Georgina flushed, and Paul Raymond smiled gently.
‘I see you do. No one could say you hadn't been patient and more than fair. They've both probably been carrying a fair amount of guilt, which will be contributing to their instability. Dealing to the issues between you can only be beneficial in the long run. You go talk to your sister now and I'll be on hand as soon as you call. Okay?’
Georgina dragged in another calming breath, nodded and hurried from the room. In the hallway she paused, knowing she wasn't ready to confront Fran just yet and turned for the lounge at the far end of the corridor. A balcony opened from it with a sun-roof, potted palms and a magnificent view of the ocean. The room was empty save for the brother of one of the crew members of the ‘Astrid’ who was sprawled before the television. She'd met him a few times when she'd been doing healing work with his brother.
Big and dark with Irish blue eyes, he exuded a brash sexuality that expected to be noticed. Greeting him absently, she passed through the lounge and out onto the balcony.
Dark cloud built up far out on the horizon and the sea breeze danced capriciously over her skin as she leant on the railing. She was much more aware of the tension within her than of anything external. She'd never won in conflict with Fran and she wasn't looking forward to instigating a confrontation with her in her present state of mind. There was really no reason why it couldn't be free of acrimony but it wasn't likely to be. Under normal circumstances Fran was articulate and vocal in her own cause but there was very little that was normal in the current circumstance.
In retrospect she would probably find talking with Gould had been relatively easy. At least he'd been apologetic. The idea of Fran apologizing almost brought a smile to her lips.
‘That cloud-bank out there looks like it's trying to build into something.’
Sean Dayton, who a moment ago had been watching the television, leant against the railing at her side. Georgina shifted her awareness to the distant cloud mass.
