Lady Mislaid

by Claire Rayner

  Getting down was easier than climbing up had been. She hitched Danny forwards slightly, so that his head was against her shoulder rather than the small of her back, and sat down on the top step – and then bumped on her rump awkwardly and childishly, from step to step, down into the house below.

  It got hotter as she went down, hotter and thicker, and so much noisier. The crackling had become a busy roaring, a cheering, singing roaring as the fire announced its triumph, and the smoke was lurid with light, rosy rather than grey-blue, rosy and sunny with a warm yellow tinge. Like a Septemer morning, very early, she thought. Pretty. But hotter than September. So much hotter; yet almost pleasant.

  She found it easy to stand up once her feet hit the landing, for she just had to lean forwards, and Danny’s body slid down her back and balanced her until she was again on her feet, and moving along the wall, using her spare hand to feel her way.

  And the second carpeted flight of stairs, was there, miraculously, and again she was sitting on the steps sliding and bumping downwards while Danny’s arm slapped heavily against each riser as she moved. But even if it broke his arm, she couldn’t do anything about that, and –”I’m sorry, darling, if I’m hurting you –” she whispered ridiculously.

  She could see it then, and found the sight oddly beautiful. Flames were licking gently and languorously round the door frames in the hall below, stretching delicate seeking slender arms across the wall, climbing with swift gaiety up curtains, framing the heavy varnished pictures in fringes of beautiful scarlet and crimson and orange. The light was vivid, but disappeared in sudden heavy clouds of gorgeously coloured smoke, only to reappear again as the smoke rose upwards, filling the stairwell with a cotton woolish loveliness.

  And there were other sounds too, loud and clamorous, above the roar and crackling of the flames, sounds that made Abigail feel as though she were at a circus, watching the ring fill with loveliness while she waited with breathless eagerness for lithe and lovely animals to come and leap through the frames of fire that were the doorways.

  Shouts and bells and bangs, and louder and louder shouts which rose into a crescendo that made her stop her slow bumping movements down the stairs. For they weren’t stairs any more, were they? No. of course they weren’t. They were the ranks of seats surrounded the circus ring, and she and Danny were sitting there, waiting for the clowns and the lovely animals and the trapeze men, and the gorgeous girls perched high on the broad backs of great quiet dignified horses.

  And then, beyond the circus ring, the curtains parted. No – not curtains – the big door, the big door with its pretty pieces of blue and red glass in it. Door – or curtains? Of course it must be curtains.

  “They always have curtains at circuses, Danny darling,” she whispered in explanation, and sat and stared hopefully at the curtains that looked so like a door. And the opening they framed appeared, widened, and was completely there as the curtains fell with a crash.

  “Curtains should go sideways, shouldn’t they, Danny? Not fall inwards like that –” she said, surprised and somehow annoyed.

  And then –”We’ve got a gorgeous seat, Danny,” she whispered. “We can see all the people beyond the curtain – look, darling – can you see? – look–”

  But the people didn’t stay beyond the curtain, but came pouring through, men in bright heavy brass helmets and heavy black clothes, and as she stared at them stupidly, the circus she had been watching disappeared, and she was back in the house, the house that was blazing around them, and Danny wasn’t sitting eager and happy beside her, but was lying helplessly unconscious across her screaming aching back.

  But then he was gone. Someone had lifted him from her, had taken hold of her convulsive grip and gently prised it open and taken him away. And she could see Danny carried out in the arms of a burly man in a big shiny helmet, a man in the shimmering black clothes of a fireman.

  She tried to stand up, and swayed and fell forwards. And she made no attempt to stop hrself, for Danny was safe now, and it just didn’t matter, not one bit, whether she fell or not.

  But there were arms there, big strong arms, and they caught her and raised her, and something pulled the mask from her face. And then she was moving swiftly, her face pressed against something rough, that smelled good, not smoky or sick or dusty, just good.

  She was lying on something hard, could feel an incredible coolness on her cheeks, could hear shouts, loud approving shouts, and someone saying, “He’ll be all right – get him to the ambulance – they’ve got oxygen in it – but get well away before you use it – hurry now – and bring up the other ambulance for the other one – move back there – move back.”

  She opened her eyes, painfully and stickily, and the thinness of the sunlight after the heavy light of the fire she had been staring at blinded her for a moment.

  But then her vision cleared and there was something between her and the sky she was trying to see above it. Fretfully she turned her head, but the something moved too, so that she had to look at it–

  A face. A broad craggy face, with dark eyes, staring down at her. A familar beloved face. And she reached up with one aching hand to touch it, and whispered, “Oh where were you? I’ve wanted you so – and needed you so much, and you weren’t there. Darling, darling Miles, where were you? –” and closed her eyes in deep peace as he held her close.

  And snapped them open again, and stared at him again and said incredulously ‘Max’ And slid at last into the utter peace and comfort of complete oblivion.

  CHAPTER TEN

  She lay still, cocooned in the warmth of her bed, holding back the moment when awareness would come to flood her with thoughts of the day to come, memories of the yesterday now lost in th past–

  But outside things began to creep in, as they always did. There were birds singing somewhere, quite near. And the windows must be open wide, for there was a smell of lilac–

  Here we go again, said the little voice conversationally. This is where we came in, isnt it?

  She opened her eyes, reluctantly, and stared upwards. There was a bottle hanging there, gleaming translucent in the sunshine, a fine tube running from it. Lazily she let her eyes follow it down, past the little glass chamber that let liquid drip rythmically into a tiny reservoir of sparking clear fluid, on, until the tube disappeared into a cream coloured bandage. A bandage on her own arm. She looked at it consideringly. A drip. A intravenous drip. How very, very odd.

  She moved slightly, and pain shot through her sharply, surprised her into a little whimper. Immediately there was a movement in the room beyond the bed, and she turned her head, painful thought it was, and saw him.

  “Abigail,” he said, and she smiled at him with a deep delight, with a sense of homecoming and safety that banished the pain in her limbs, made her breathing lose its shap rasping quality. And extraordinarily, she saw her eyes fill with a sudden brightness that looked like unshed tears.

  “Miles – darling, don’t look like that –” she said, and her voice was husky and painful, making that curious sense of startled awareness come again.

  “Miles?” she said uncertainly.

  “Yes, he said and his voice was very soft, but with a warmth in it that was amost tangible, that felt like a balm.

  “Can you forgive me, darling? I’ll never forgive myself – but if you can, I –” and he shook his head, as though he couldn’t say anymore.

  “Forgive you?” she said, and frowned a little, puzzled. “What for?”

  “Darling – can’t you remember yet? I thought – they’d hoped – the doctors – that you would have – you recognized me, you see, really recognized me, as myself – and I thought–”

  And then it was all there, complete, the edges of the jigsaw puzzle clearly defined, the spaces filled in. She was Abigail Tenterden and here sitting beside her was her husband. The husband she had forgotten. And now remembered.

  Her eyes widened, and she stared at him. “You are Miles. My Miles.”

 
And his hand closed over her’s, big and warm, and he said with a deep relief, “Yes. Your Miles, Now and–”

  “But you were–”

  He nodded, his face bleak again. “Yes. I was Max as well. Can you forgive me for that? It was an abominable thing to have done – but I didn’t know, you see. Couldn’t be sure. And when Danny disappeared it looked so – damning and I let her tell me – I had to know, and that was the only way I could find out. Forgive me, darling. Although I loved you as much as I had from the beginning, I suddenly realized how little I actually knew of you. And once before I’d been – wrong, although I hadn’t told you that. I’d misled you from the start, and I suppose that was why I was able to believe you were misleading me. And I’ll never be able to forget how nearly I lost you because of it, and I’ll never be able to forgive myself as long as I live–”

  She chuckled softly. “Heroics, darling, heroics.”

  “What?” It was his turn to look startled.

  “You’re wallowing in heroics and remorse – though I’m still not sure why – the remorse I mean. You’ll have to tell me–”

  She closed her eyes then, for the lids had become so heavy she couldn’t keep them up any longer.

  “Soon,” his whipser seemed to come from a long way away. “I’ll tell you soon. But now sleep for a while, sweetheart. You need to sleep–”

  Momentarily her eyes opened again, and she looked at his blurred figure with its nimbus of light from the window behind him. “Danny?” she asked, sleepily.

  “Doing very well, very well. I’ve seen hm, and he’s sleeping it all off now, too. You must do the same. I’ll explain everyting later, I promise.” He put out his hands and touched her eyelids so that they closed gratefully again.

  “Don’t go away,” she murmured, pushing back the rising tide of sleep again.

  “I won’t,” he promised, and she slid blissfully into the tide, let it wash over her, let the ache in her body wash away in it.

  And when she woke again, there was no waiting for awareness, for her eyes opened immediately, her head turned to seek him, and he was there, sitting with his shoulders hunched forwards, staring at her with that same considering stare she knew so well. But at the sight of her open eyes, his face cleared, was transformed with a wide smile, and his hand tightened over hers.

  “Hello,” he said softly.

  “Hi, there,” she whispered, and put her face up and he leaned forward and kissed her lips very gently, warming her deliciously.

  The drip had gone, and she said wonderingly. “When id they take that away?” looking down her arm with its neat strip of adhesive plaster in the crook of the elbow.

  “An hour ago. You were so deeply asleep, you hardly stirred. How do you feel?”

  She moved experimentally. Her body still ached, and breathing was still something she knew was happening, for it hurt to move her chest wall. But the agonzing pain was gone, only a rather pleasant sense of langour remaining.

  She smiled up at him. “I’ll live,’she said, and was startled at the response she got, for he lifted her bodily in his arms, and crushed her against him, holding her close and stroking her head with one hand.

  And when he released her, she saw, surprised, his face, that craggy heavy face, was streaked with tears. She touched his cheek gently, and said softly, “Not to fret, darling. It’s all right now, isn’t it? It nearly wasn’t, but now it is, so not to fret–”

  He lay her back against her pillow, and blew his nose rather noisily. And smiled at her, she said simply, “Yes.”

  They stayed there in companionable silece for a long time, Abigail letting her hand rest peaceable in Miles’ warm grasp, as she lay and looked at him, just happy to be with him. And then she moved again, and painfully hitched herself up until she was leaning against her pillows in a more upright position.

  “Can you tell me, now, what it all was? I can remember quiet a lot – all of it, probably, but until you tell me the whole story from the beginning, I won’t know if I have remembered properly.

  “I’d better make sure you can cope with it all first,” he said, and reached for the bell and rang it.

  The nurse that came in was middle aged, and pleasant, and turned Miles out of the room while she ’settled Mrs. Tenterden properly.” Which involved temperature-taking and washing, and manouuvres with bedpan which amused Abigail quite a bit, for she had never been a hospital patient before, and realized for the first time what it was like to be really bed-fast.

  But by the time the nurse had finished, and rung the bell for the ward maid to bring in a tray of hot tea and buttered toast and raspberry jam – ’tomorrow you can eat more – this is the best thing for this evening –” the nurse said when Abigail made a face and murmured something about real food like bacon and eggs – she felt a good deal more comfortable.

  The nurse closed the curtain and turned on the bedside light, making the room shrink to a pleasing cosiness, and went away to send Miles back.

  And he too drank tea from a cup thoughtfully provided by the friendly little ward maid, and watched her as she wolfed down her food, and smiled at her, pleased, when she had finished.

  “That’s made you look a lot better,” he said approvingly. “Not nearly so peaky–”

  “And aching to know everything,” Abigail said. “I need information now more than I need anything else.”

  “Where do I start?”

  “At the beginning, she said. “Right at the beginning. I’ve got to match my memories from the time I forgot, you see.”

  “Yes –” he swallowed, a little painfully, and said, ’there’ll be some things you won’t remember, for you never knew about them. You won’t like them, I know, but try not to interrupt.”

  She grinned a little wickedly. ’that sounds more like Max than Miles,” and he flushed, and then looked a little rueful as she tightened her hand on his, to take a sting out of her words.

  “All right,” he said. “Here goes. Ten years ago, I married a girl called Constance Cantrell –” she opened her mouth to interrupt, and he put his hand over her lips. “Yes – Cantrell. That was why I chose the name for a pseudonym. It was the one that came into my head at the moment. Well, I – I loved her. Do you mind?” and she smiled and shook her head.

  “You love me now, so it doesn’t matter,” she said simply, and he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.

  “I loved her,” his voice was stronger now. “But I soon found out she didn’t really care for me. She was more enamoured of the idea of marrying a penniless artist than of me as a person – she was very wealthy, and I – made a change from her usual crew. Well, Daniel was born at the end of our first year of marriage. He – he didn’t mean much to me then, really. Babies – well, I knew nothing about them. He was my son, but that was more – more of a notion that pleased me. Loving him just wasn’t part of the picture. Especially as she showed no interest in him. She – she was too busy running about with the various men she’d always run about with.

  “Well, when Daniel was still very much a baby, she was killed in a drunken road crash. And I just didn’t care. I think it was that that upset me most – not caring. I had loved her once, you see, at the beginning, but by then – it was dead ashes. And I was glad to be rid of her.”

  His face looked grim as he looked back over the years, staring beyond Abigail with a blank gaze. But he seemed to shake himself and went on.

  “Daniel had been in the care of his Aunt Cecily from the start. There was nothing to keep me here any more, it seemed to me. A dead and faithless wife, a son who was too young to know or care – so I went away. I took myself to Normandy and I lived there alone for eight years.”

  He grinned at her then. “Odd how it all worked itself out. I wasn’t a happy man – but I was a bloody productive one. I’ve turned out some damned good work these last years.”

  He said it without any bragging, but with the calm assurance of the craftsman who is an artist of genius into the bargain, a
nd has the judgement to recognize it.

  “I know,” she said softly. “I’ve seen a lot of your work. And I can remember how much it mattered to me that you should get well, because of it, when you were assigned to me at the Royal.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her again. “And saved my life, I think. Anyway, you are just about to enter this story.”

  He sat back, and went on in the same considering rather remote voice he had used before.

  “It was when Daniel was almost nine that I – remembered I was a father. I had to make some sort of plan for his future, and I unburied myself and came to London to see him.”

  He stopped again, and then said painfully, “It was a shock, meeting him. Such a grave, sensible child. So very much a person. I liked him. Extraordinary, really, for he was a stranger to me, after all. And it says a lot for Daniel that he liked me, accepted me as a father, no questions asked, no recriminations at all. Though he led an odd and dreary life, it seemed to me, in that huge heavy house, with just Cecily, and a couple of servants – and later on, Michael.”

  “Michael,” she said. “I think I remember him. Wasn’t he – ?”

  “You’ll hear more about him later,” and Miles’ voice hardended. “Anyway, I had decided to stay in England, to start being a real father for Daniel, when I let myself get run over.”

  He sounded disgusted. “Christ, but it was stupid. I walked across Oxford Street as though it were the village street at Moulins Verts – and got myself mixed up with a taxi. It was worth it though, because that was how I found you.”

  He smiled at her then, and said softly, “Do you remember?”

  She nodded. She remembered very well. The way she had felt when Sister Bartlett had said. “We’ve or a new patient – road accident. Head injuries, for observation. You’d better take him –” The way his name had made her jerk into anxiety, fearful that so blazing a talent should be snuffed out. The way he had looked during the early worrying days of his recovery, how helplessly she had fallen in love with him. And the heaven of finding he loved her too. The whirlwind of their growing relationship, and the way they lived an a daze of happiness. Their wedding, with just two of her friends from the Royal there. The solemn way Daniel had shaken hands with her when Miles had said simply. ’this is Abigail. I hope you two can like each other.” The way he had looked at her with a considering gaze that turnd her heart over, so like Miles’ was it, and said, “I think I shall like her. She has an open face, not a shut-up face like Auntie Cissie’s–”