‘So it would seem.’
‘What did Peter say to the new pupils you took on?’
‘Welcome,’ she said shortly. ‘He wants to build up the congregation. He thinks their attendance at Sunday school will benefit the school’s existing pupils as well as them.’
The water began to boil and Micah tipped it on the coffee. ‘Good for Peter, but allowing Anna and the other girls’ children into Sunday school isn’t quite the same as allowing his wife to drink afternoon tea in a brothel.’
‘We sat in the kitchen and there weren’t any customers around.’
‘I should hope not, otherwise they may have taken you for the newest recruit to Anna’s academy.’
‘I’m married to a vicar,’ she reminded him.
‘That doesn’t give someone as young and pretty as you the right to be above suspicion, like Caesar’s wife.’
‘People would have to be petty-minded to make something out of nothing. Working for the good of the parish means visiting all kinds of people.’
‘And gives you an excuse to get out of the vicarage. Is your desire for fresh air and a walk an indication of trouble in paradise?’ he asked bluntly.
‘Define paradise.’
‘You sound like a schoolteacher delivering a lesson on analysis.’ He dropped a spoon into the jug and mixed the coffee and water.
‘I was a pupil until July.’
‘So you were. But to get back to the subject, doesn’t every honeymooner believe they’ve reached paradise?’ When she didn’t comment, he continued, ‘Let me guess: you and your mother-in-law don’t get on.’
‘I could complain about her, Micah, but I’d rather not even think about her. I’ll be seeing her soon enough.’
‘It’s that bad between you?’
‘Worse.’
He finished stirring the coffee and strained it into the mugs. ‘Then why invite her to live with you?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Peter did?’
Needing to change the subject, she looked at his music case. ‘Would you do me the most enormous favour?’
‘I would say anything for a lady with the blues, but remember that Peter is my friend.’
‘I know you two are friends, what of it?’ she asked, surprised at his sudden sombre tone.
‘Nothing in particular, just reminding you.’
‘I was going to ask if you’d play that piece of music again. What did you think I was going to ask you to do?’
‘I wasn’t sure. And playing music is not a favour. Don’t you know that every musician is constantly in search of an audience?’ He pushed one of the mugs across the table towards her, together with the jar of sugar and pierced tin of milk.
She put one sugar and a splash of milk into the coffee and gripped the mug tightly, siphoning the warmth from it into her hands.
He sipped his coffee before lifting his case on to the table. He unclipped it and gently brushed a smudge from the polished surface of the saxophone before taking it from its bed. While he prepared the mouthpiece, she curled up in the corner of the bench seat and closed her eyes.
He started playing softly, gradually increasing the depth and breadth of the notes until he created a symphony that filled the small space, leaving no room for anything other than the music. For Edyth, the world outside ceased to exist. All her problems, all her worries, were obliterated by the seductive melody.
The bitterness and resentment she felt towards Peter’s mother dissolved into indifference. The concern she’d never voiced, and barely acknowledged – that Peter had never loved her, and had only used her to obtain the promotion he’d so passionately wanted – died as she was swept up in a swell of emotion engendered by Micah’s music.
The mood of the piece changed without warning, becoming even more evocative and beguiling. Visions rose unbidden to her mind, so tangible, so real, she could taste and feel them. She revelled in the sensation of warm, sensuous lips pressed against hers. Entwined her naked body with that of a man. Felt the flat of his hard, muscular stomach pressed against hers. Thrilled to his touch as he lightly caressed her breasts.
She was finally making love, just as she’d imagined she would on honeymoon and it was exactly how her mother had told her it would be. Surrender and submission to a passion greater than she could have ever imagined. She felt herself drowning in the depths of his blue eyes, exchanging long, loving glances that needed no words. Evidence of perfect love and harmony …
Blue eyes. Peter’s were brown.
‘Edyth!’
She looked up and saw that Micah had finished playing and was looking anxiously down at her.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I … I …’ Hot, burning pain rose in her throat, choking her. A pain that went beyond tears. How could she have been so blind as to have married Peter without realising that he didn’t love her? He had never loved her the way she loved him.
Micah set the saxophone on the table, took the mug from her trembling fingers and bent over her. Afterwards she realised he’d probably intended to raise her from the seat. But by then it was too late. She had already kissed him.
‘No!’ Micah closed his hands over hers, prised them from his neck and pushed her away. She fell back on to the seat.
‘I’m sorry.’ It was little more than a whisper and by then he had turned his back to her and was facing the door so she couldn’t be sure that he’d heard her.
He kept his face averted from hers as though he couldn’t bear to look at her. ‘Why did you do that?’ His voice was harsh, condemnatory. ‘Things can’t be that bad between you and Peter, surely? Not when you’ve only been married for nine days.’
She didn’t want to answer him because she couldn’t, not without being disloyal to Peter, her husband. Just over a week ago she had promised to love honour and obey and now – now she had kissed Micah.
He finally turned and looked at her. ‘They aren’t that bad, are they?’ he reiterated.
‘I’m sorry,’ she stammered, so ashamed she wanted to crawl into a corner and hide from Micah and everyone else who might suspect what she had done. How could she possibly go home and face Peter? Behave as if everything was normal? But then it wasn’t normal between them. Had never been normal …
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘Only to say I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. It must have been the effect of your music,’ she apologised.
‘You must have a reason for doing what you did.’
She felt that he was trying to pressurise her into admitting something. But she didn’t know what. ‘No reason beyond the music and the fact that you were there.’
There was anger and something else in his eyes, something she couldn’t decipher. ‘Married women shouldn’t continue to behave as though they’re single, Mrs Slater.’
‘I didn’t go around kissing every man in sight when I was,’ she countered angrily, upset that he thought so little of her. ‘Please, pass me my coat.’
He handed it over. She left the seat and slipped it on. It was cold, wet and clammy.
‘You’re leaving?’ he asked as she bent down and picked up her shoes.
‘Yes.’
‘You’re overwrought.’
‘I behaved like a fool.’
‘Forget it, and forget the inter-faith meeting. Let me walk you home and you can spend a quiet evening with Peter.’
‘No.’
‘No to what?’ he pressed.
‘All of it,’ she answered illogically.
‘You don’t want to forget you kissed me?’ he enquired sardonically. He fingered his lips and she wondered if he was trying to scour them clean. As if her touch had somehow defiled him.
‘Yes, I want to forget it.’ Even as she said it, she knew she wouldn’t. It wasn’t her first kiss, but it had felt like her first grown-up kiss. And that, coupled with the music, had created a moment, a memory, she wanted to cling to, treasure and savour.
‘Abou
t the meeting,’ he switched abruptly to practical considerations, ‘Christmas is months away. At this stage of the committee people simply argue about who’s going to do what. If you don’t go, I can volunteer you for every boring task no one else wants to do and then the meeting will be over in record time.’
She pulled the newspaper out of her shoes and slipped them on. ‘That doesn’t sound ideal from my point of view.’
‘But it’s brilliant from everyone else’s. Inter-faith committee meetings can be as tedious as –’
‘As tedious as?’ She forced herself to look at him but he could no longer meet her gaze. They had enjoyed an easy, friendly relationship but she had destroyed it. Furious with herself for succumbing to the stupid impulse to kiss him she picked up her hat.
‘… I was going to say a vicar’s sermon before I realised that I can’t say that to you. Look, if you do go to the meeting you won’t achieve anything and everyone will see that you are upset. That will give rise to gossip. Can’t you just hear the old wives?’ He mimicked a shrill woman’s voice. ‘“Have you heard? The vicar’s wife isn’t happy? Is it the mother-in-law? Is it the work she’s expected to do? Is it Mrs Mack’s tea? I heard the vicar beats her …”’
‘Peter would have to acknowledge my presence to beat me.’ The moment the words were out of her mouth she regretted them. But just as Mari had warned her so often, once out, there was no taking them back.
He breathed in sharply. ‘I see.’
‘No, you don’t, Micah. I may be a very new wife but I have learned one thing in a week. The only people who can possibly know what a marriage is like are the people inside it.’
‘It might help to talk about it,’ he said, after a moment’s strained silence.
‘There’s no point.’
‘Try me. I’m a good listener and a pastor, which means anything you tell me is as good as speaking in a confessional.’
‘You’re Lutheran, not Catholic, and I don’t need a religious mentor. I have one at home – remember.’
‘Who, it appears, you can’t talk to.’ He sank down on one of the couches. ‘The same rules of confidentiality apply to the ministers of all the Christian religions, and I could speak to Peter for you, if you want me to.’
‘There’s no point in talking to Peter. He doesn’t listen.’ She set her hat on her head.
‘If ever you need to get away, or want to be alone, you can come here any time you like.’
‘After what I just did?’ She looked at him again and that time she caught him looking back at her.
‘I never come here in the morning. You’re welcome to use it then.’
‘No, thank you. I think it’s best that I make this my first and last visit to the Escape.’ Hurt at her offhand rejection of his offer was mirrored in the depths of his deep, blue eyes. And she realised then just whose blue eyes she had seen in her vision when he had been playing the music.
She took her umbrella from the bucket and pretended to study it intently.
‘Please, Edyth, let me take you home?’
She opened the door.
‘You’re upset. I can’t bear the thought of you walking back through the Bay alone in this mood. I won’t rest until I know that you have reached home safely.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she asserted. ‘You don’t need to worry about me.’
‘I’ll make your apologies at the meeting then. Tell everyone that you had to make your mother-in-law a proper welcoming tea – with arsenic.’
She tried to laugh at his stupid quip but a lump in her throat prevented her. She walked up the steps and on to the deck. Grey dusk had turned to dark, overcast night. The black sea glittered with the silver, gold and crimson reflections of shore lights and those on the boats.
Someone was singing on the quayside in an old man’s wavering voice. Edyth couldn’t make out the words but she recognised the rhythm of a sea shanty.
Micah’s hand closed around her arm. ‘Please, let me walk you home.’
‘No.’
‘It’s forgotten.’
She found the courage to say what she suspected he was thinking as well as her. ‘It will never be forgotten, not by either of us.’
‘I need to know …’
‘What?’ she asked when he didn’t finish his sentence.
‘You and Peter – is your marriage a sham?’
It was then she realised he was as attracted to her as she was to him, but with all the other complications in her life she couldn’t bear to think what that might mean. Not now.
‘It doesn’t matter whether it is or it isn’t, Micah. You were there at the ceremony. We’re joined together by God, for better for worse. “Let no man break asunder …”’
‘Edyth –’
‘Goodbye, Micah.’
Edyth ran off the boat, away from the dock and into the maze of back streets. She thought that if she kept the sea at her back and headed in more or less a straight line she would soon reach the vicarage, but whether it was the darkness, the street lights or the thoughts that kept intruding and demanding her attention, she managed to lose her way.
She saw the pyramid-capped towers of the church half an hour before she reached them. Twice she found herself facing high brick walls that blocked what she was certain was the most direct path to the vicarage. She would have asked someone, but the heavy rain had kept most people indoors and she was wary of approaching the few men she saw.
She tried to take her mind off what had happened by concentrating on the house, the tasks that needed doing, the cleaning, polishing and rearrangement of china and glass. She decided to confront Peter’s mother and insist that she be allowed to use her own things. Then she recalled how Florence always managed to freeze her out of the conversation and that Peter invariably bowed to his mother’s demands, and realised she had absolutely no chance of succeeding.
She finally walked past the church hall, saw the lights on, heard a hubbub of women’s voices and remembered the Mother’s Union meeting. At least she wouldn’t have to cope with Peter’s mother right away. She walked down the lane, slipped her key into the lock and opened the front door quietly. Mrs Mack was crouched on her knees outside Peter’s study door, her ear to the keyhole.
‘Mrs Mack! What on earth are you doing?’
There was a resounding crash from inside the study.
Alarmed, forgetting Peter’s directive that she never walk in on him without knocking, she ran to the door, pushed Mrs Mack aside and turned the knob. It was stuck fast. She pushed it.
‘Edyth, is that you?’ Peter called.
‘Yes, I just caught Mrs Mack eavesdropping outside your door.’
‘I’ll be out in a moment.’
Edyth turned and confronted the housekeeper who had climbed to her feet. ‘Go upstairs and pack your things.’
The housekeeper swayed slightly and crossed her arms across her thin chest. ‘No.’
‘What did you say?’ Edyth couldn’t believe the woman’s refusal.
‘I said no. I’m not going.’
Edyth took a deep breath and braced herself. ‘There is no “not going”, about it, your behaviour is unacceptable.’
Peter opened the door. His face was red, his hair dishevelled, his dog collar crooked. ‘Edyth, what’s all this noise?’
‘I caught Mrs Mack on her hands and knees crouched outside your door listening through the keyhole.’
‘I was just about to ask if you and the young man would like some tea.’ Mrs Mack gazed coolly at Peter.
Edyth looked past Peter. The young constable Peter had introduced to her as secretary of the church council was sitting on a chair that had been pulled in front of Peter’s desk. He turned and glanced at her. ‘Mrs Slater.’
‘Constable Jones, isn’t it?’ She smiled, but his eyes remained cold.
‘She,’ Mrs Mack jabbed her finger in Edyth’s direction, ‘told me to pack my bags, Reverend.’
‘We’ll discuss this later, Mrs Mack, after Const
able Jones and I have finished our council business,’ Peter said shortly.
‘Didn’t you hear me, Peter? I said she was eavesdropping outside your door –’
‘I said later, Edyth.’
He shut the door in her face. The front door opened and Florence Slater walked in.
‘Edyth, you’re dripping over the floor.’
It was only then Edyth realised that she had yet to take off her coat or put her umbrella in the stand.
‘Mrs Mack,’ Florence Slater held out her arms and the housekeeper helped her out of her coat, ‘we’ll have tea in the sitting room. I trust you’ve made up the fire.’
‘Yes, Mrs Slater.’ Mrs Mack smiled triumphantly at Edyth, ‘Would you like toast or a tea-cake with your tea, Mrs Slater?’
‘Buttered toast, Mrs Mack. Edyth, your umbrella has dripped all over the floor. Mrs Mack has enough to do without clearing up unnecessary messes.’
Edyth dropped her umbrella into the stand and shrugged off her coat.
‘The meeting was very successful. I have a great deal to tell you. Edyth, where are you going?’ Florence demanded when Edyth set her foot on the stairs.
‘To bed,’ Edyth said shortly. ‘It’s been a very long day and I’m tired.’
‘I’m not sure that you are strong enough to be a vicar’s wife, Edyth. You need to be in good health and, as I said earlier, if the groceries you bought are indicative of the way you’ve been brought up to eat – shop-bought cakes and the like – it’s hardly surprising you’re not up to doing a full day’s work. It’s just as well I came here a week early.’
Edyth carried on walking up the stairs.
‘Edyth, I’m speaking to you.’
‘I heard, Mrs Slater,’ Edyth finally snapped, ‘but I chose not to answer.’
Chapter Twenty-two
Knowing Judy and Mrs Mack were busy in the kitchen, Peter left the breakfast table and opened the front door at the second ring of the bell.
‘Surprise!’ Bella kissed Peter on the cheek and walked into the hall. ‘Sorry to interrupt your breakfast, but we’ve asked and asked you and Edyth to visit us, and you’re always busy. So, we thought we’d come down and surprise you.’
Tiger Bay Blues Page 39
