A Wilder Shore

by Daphne Clair

  She knew he was waking when his breathing changed, and when his eyed opened and focused on her she was watching him.

  But no sooner had the light of full consciousness returned to them than he shuttered his eyes and put his hand across them and then sat up. He looked at the clock and made some exclamation, and swung off the bed.

  'I rang the office,' Elise told him, 'and told them you were here, but not to tell the reporters. They said no messages that can't wait until tomorrow.'

  'Thank you,' he said. 'I need a shower.'

  While he was in the bathroom she reheated the casserole and cut some thick slices off a French loaf to go with it.

  Shard came into the kitchen with his hair still damp from the shower, doing up the belt of his towelling robe.

  'You're not cooking at this time of night --?' he queried. 'I don't need anything.'

  'I cooked it hours ago,' she said. 'And you do. It's all ready, so eat it.'

  'Oh, for God's sake,' he sighed wearily. 'Must you go on playing the perfect wife?'

  Her hand tightened on the spoon she was placing in the steaming casserole. Without a tremor she said, 'Perhaps we could discuss that later. I've just reheated this. Please don't let it get cold again.'

  He bit back something he had been going to say, and sat down while she waited on him. He ate a good helping of the casserole, refused ice cream and fruit, and drank two cups of coffee while she sat opposite and drank one.

  Then he pushed away his cup and said, 'You know, of course, what's happened.'

  'Yes. Not the finer details, but in general terms. Is it very bad? How much have you lost?'

  'I'm not sure yet just how bad. I'm trying to salvage what I can. But I stand to lose everything I have.'

  'Oh, Shard, I'm so sorry!'

  She saw him clench his fists on the table, and he said: 'You can have a divorce any time you like.'

  At first Elise didn't believe she had heard aright. And then, when she knew that she had, she found herself shaking with a pure white flame of anger. She pushed back her chair, moved to leave him and found herself clinging for support to the chairback. She wished she had the strength to pick it up and throw it at him. Her voice clipped and brittle, she snapped, 'Thank you! I suppose that's the only thing you have left now to give me.'

  His shoulders tensed. 'Yes,' he agreed, 'that's probably right.'

  'Do you really think that's what I want?' she asked. 'Do you?'

  He suddenly pushed back his chair and rose to face her. 'You wouldn't have married me if I hadn't had money,' he said flatly. He stopped her quick protest with a slashing, savage gesture of his hand. 'It's true!' he said. 'You were frank about it at the time, don't start being squeamish now, for God's sake! You wanted me, yes, but you found that no hardship to resist as long as you thought I had no prospects of success and a good income. Don't think I'm complaining, Elise. I was grateful for your honesty—at least it left me no illusions to be shattered. And for your passion, it was all I'd hoped for. I think I carried out my part in the bargain fairly well, but now I'm no longer in a position to do that. So I won't hold you to your part.'

  For a moment it seemed wildly funny that Katherine and Shard had apparently both assessed her character and her motives in the same way, but Elise recognised the hysterical desire to laugh and bit her tongue to stop it. She knew the doubt that had kept her from acknowledging and giving into her feelings for Shard had been nothing to do with his money or his success. Yet Shard was talking of her 'frankness' as though she had admitted to him that it was.

  'I don't understand you --' she began helplessly.

  'No,' he said. 'You never did.'

  He turned away from her and left the room. Elise moved her fingers from the chairback and discovered that they ached, her hold on it had been so tight. Automatically she stacked the dishes in the sink, then braced herself to go into the bedroom.

  Shard was dressed in trousers and a shirt that he was just buttoning up.

  'Are you going out?' she asked.

  'To the office. I won't sleep any more tonight, anyway, and there are things to be cleared up there, too.'

  'Will it make a difference?' she asked. 'If you go tonight instead of tomorrow morning, will it help to save the business?'

  'No. It won't save the business.'

  'Then,' she said, 'I think I have the right to ask you not to go.'

  He was half turned from her, his fingers on a button of his shirt. She saw him tense, and then he turned to look at her, and in the dim light from the bedlamp his eyes seemed to be suffering. His hands fell away from the button and for a moment the palms turned to her almost in a supplicating gesture. Then he shrugged and said, 'If you insist.'

  She said, 'You've accused me more than once of running away from things. I thought you were above that.'

  'I wasn't running away. I just don't see any point in going over the ashes.'

  'I don't want a divorce!' she told him fiercely. 'I've become used to you deciding what I want and then giving it to me, but this time your—generosity—is out of hand, not to say ludicrous! I won't accept a divorce.'

  She moved, coming towards him, into the circle of the lamplight. She felt cold and sick and her knees trembled.

  Shard drew in a quick, harsh breath and moved suddenly to put his hand under her elbow, and then his fingers gripped her arm.

  'For God's sake lie down,' he said. 'You're ill.'

  'Not really.' But she sank thankfully down on the bed as he stripped off the covers and helped her into it. Her head felt heavy on the pillow and she closed her eyes thankfully for a moment.

  When she opened them, Shard was standing looking down at her, his mouth, a harsh line and his eyes dark and glittery. 'Please don't look like that,' she whispered, reminded of his expression when he had come in and found her here with Cole. 'You're wrong about me. Shard. So terribly wrong --'

  She felt the tears coming and turned her head away, desperately closing her eyes to stop them.

  She felt his hand grip hers, and fingers brushing the tumbled hair from her cheeks. She gasped, trying to stifle a sob, and gritting her teeth, managed a few words. 'You've got to listen –'

  'Not now,' he said. 'We can talk in the morning. You made me sleep, now it's your turn.'

  She felt him withdrawing his hand from hers, and she clutched. 'Don't go away!' she begged in panic.

  'Shh!' he said, and she thought that his lips brushed against her fingers. 'I'm not going anywhere. Go to sleep.'

  She woke to the sound of voices, floating intermittently from the lounge. She heard her mother's clipped clear tones, and her father's deeper, forceful and persuasive voice. Then Shard sounding curt and controlled. The words were inaudible, but she had a picture of Shard trying to hold on to his temper in the face of her father's well-meant offers of help, and her mother's determined and deadly charity.

  The clock stood at almost ten, and brilliant light seeped into the room around the edges of the drawn blind. Elise sit up suddenly and had to lie back for a moment to fight a wave of dizziness. The next time she did it cautiously, gradually getting her feet to the floor, and making gingerly for the bathroom.

  When she had dressed and pulled a brush quickly over her hair, she pulled the bedroom door to behind her and heard the sudden lull in the sounds from the lounge as she walked towards it.

  Shard was standing, his eyes darkly watchful as she appeared in the doorway. Howard was sitting in one of the armchairs, leaning forward as though trying hard to make some point to Shard, his brow creased with effort. And Katherine looked poised and pretty and anxious on the sofa.

  'Elise dear,' she said, 'come and sit down. Howard had business to discuss with Shard, and I came to see how you were this morning, but Shard said you were sleeping. I'm glad you're taking the doctor's advice seriously.' As Elise obeyed, she turned to Shard. 'You must take very special care of her now, you know, Shard.'

  'Yes,' he said, 'I've been told that.' His voice was even, but as h
is eyes rested on Elise they held a savage mockery, and her heart plunged in sudden fear.

  'Will you promise to think about it, at least?' Howard was saying to Shard.

  Formally Shard answered, 'I'll think about it. And thanks for the offer.'

  He looked taut and fed up, and even as Elise turned to tell her mother that yes, she had slept very well, and she had started taking the iron pills, she felt a tremor of apprehension.

  'I'll make some tea,' she said, getting up.

  'Not for me,' said Howard. 'I've got to get back to the office.'

  'I've stayed away from mine long enough, too,' Shard said. 'Why don't you stay for lunch with Elise, Katherine, and keep her company.'

  Howard said heartily. 'Good idea—we'll leave the girls to gossip, shall we?'

  Shard avoided Elise's looks of slightly despairing appeal, and turned with Howard to the door. Three minutes later they were both gone, and Katherine said, 'You know, I could do with a cup of tea. Your husband is really very difficult to help.' Her tone was light and almost humorous, but Elise heard the exasperation behind it.

  'Yes,' she said, 'he can be very—determined.'

  She found the next few hours wearing, trying to concentrate on her mother's sweet-sour comments on mutual acquaintances and the accounts of various social and charitable functions she had attended recently, interspersed with advice on managing a husband, pregnancy and children. As she left, Katherine said, 'You know, I'm quite looking forward to being a grandmother. Now don't disappoint me this time, will you, dear? Look after yourself.'

  'Yes, I will,' Elise promised mechanically.

  'Have a rest, now—promise me!'

  'Yes.'

  Elise closed the door and leaned against it tiredly. Her body felt weary and aching, but her brain was overactive. She kept thinking of how Shard had looked at her this morning without tenderness or a vestige of understanding. He had promised that this morning they would talk, but instead he had left the flat as soon as he decently could. Almost as though he couldn't bear to be in the same room with her.

  The telephone shrilled, making her jump. She looked at it with hatred. It never carried good news these days. It was never Shard.

  Tempted to let it ring, she thought perhaps this time...

  But it was Cole, asking for Shard.

  'He's at the office,' Elise told him wearily.

  'Wrong,' he said. 'I tried there and they said he'd gone out but they didn't know where. They suggested I try his home.'

  'I don't know where he is.'

  A pause. 'Are you all right, Elise?'

  'I'm fine.'

  'No more dizzy spells?'

  'One or two, but the doctor's given me a course of iron.'

  'That's the ticket. You know, when Shard came in the other day, for a fantastic moment I thought he'd got the wrong idea—about you and me. Of course later I realised that he'd just had a nasty shock, about the finance business, which accounted for his odd expression. How is he, now?'

  'Coping,' she said. 'Very well.'

  'He would, of course. Pleased about the baby, is he?'

  'Delighted,' she said.

  He didn't notice the irony in her voice. 'Well, there's a silver lining,' he said. 'Tell him I was after him, would you?'

  'Yes, I will.'

  'And don't forget what I said about helping out if you need it. I meant it.'

  'Thank you. Goodbye, Cole.'

  She lay on her bed and tried closing her eyes against the hot burning sensation behind them, but couldn't sleep. She wondered where Shard was. Not on his way to her, she was sure.

  When he did come in, it was later than usual, and she was in the kitchen, surrounded by a culinary aroma of herbs and wine and sour cream. She had chosen to cook a complicated and time-consuming meal to occupy her mind, and she had laid the table with care and precision, rejecting candles but making sure the cutlery was rubbed to a satiny sheen and the glasses sparkled on a beautifully ironed linen cloth.

  Shard stopped in the doorway of the kitchen and she saw that his clothes were mud-splattered and his hair damp. Her hands were full with a pot of hot vegetables she was about to drain, and he said, 'Can it wait while I get cleaned up?'

  'Yes, of course,' she said, and turned to place the pot in the sink. When she glanced up again, he had gone.

  When he sat down, in open-necked dark shirt and casual fitting pants, he looked sardonically at the table and the steaming dishes and asked, 'Should I have dressed for dinner?'

  She didn't answer, choosing to ignore the jibe. 'Where have you been this afternoon?' she asked. 'You weren't in the office.'

  'Did you check up on me, my sweet wife?'

  He was being deliberately unpleasant, and she saw no reason why she should let him get away with it. She said, 'I'm sure if there was anything I should check up on, you'd have covered your tracks very adequately.'

  'I went to the Dunfield site,' he said abruptly.

  She looked up. 'Are they still working on it?'

  'No. The subcontractors downed tools as soon as they thought there was a doubt about their getting paid.'

  Elise remembered the way he had looked the first time she had seen the site, with the breeze blowing in his hair and his face raised to watch the swinging of the crane while below the workmen were busy and purposeful, drilling, hammering, digging, beginning the months of effort that would end in the handsome, ambitious structure pictured in the drawings on his office wall. Today he had been down there again, walking alone on the deserted duckboards and perhaps clambering up the scaffolding again where the skeleton of the building had begun to assume its future shape, the promise of permanence and solidity.

  'What will happen?' she asked.

  'It will go ahead. I saw Dunfield himself today.'

  'That's good—isn't it?'

  'Yes, that's good. But it doesn't get us out of the wood.'

  'We'll manage,' she said. 'It will come right, Shard, I know it.'

  He leaned back in his chair and looked at her, his eyes opaque, but his voice unmistakably jeering. 'Spoken like a loyal little wife,' he drawled.

  Her voice hard, she said. That's what! am.'

  'Yes, of course. And I should be grateful, shouldn't I? I've never been one to cry for the moon, after all.'

  'No,' she said. 'If you wanted it you'd get up there and pull it down.'

  'And if I did,' he said mockingly, 'maybe I'd find it was made of green cheese, after all.'

  'How disappointing.' Determinedly she forked into her potatoes as though unaware what he meant. She was not giving him the satisfaction of knowing how much he hurt her.

  She hardly expected to be complimented on her cooking, but when he had finished. Shard said, 'That was quite delicious. The way to a man's heart --'

  The sting in the tail, she thought bitterly. 'It isn't like you to talk in clichés, Shard.'

  'Maybe it's catching. You seem to think in them.'

  'Is that remark supposed to mean something?' she enquired coldly. 'Or are you just being poisonous for the pleasure of it?'

  He put down the wineglass he had been holding in his strong fingers and said, 'It's no pleasure. I assume that all this'—he indicated the table with its exquisitely careful setting now somewhat disarrayed—'is a softening-up process designed to smooth the way for that discussion we're supposed to have. Isn't it?'

  'Actually,' she said, 'it was simply to give myself something to do while I waited. You did promise to talk this morning.'

  'By the time I'd talked to your parents, I'd had about enough talking. Do you really think it's necessary?'

  'You thought so, yourself, last night.'

  'Did I? Last night seems aeons ago.'

  Elise stood up. 'I'll bring coffee into the lounge. 'No, please don't help. 1 won't be long.'

  Shard looked at her and shrugged and went into the other room. She washed the dishes quickly while the coffee brewed and took the two cups into the lounge. She felt nervous and keyed up, and S
hard looked as though he was deliberately not giving anything away, his movements economical and controlled, his face hard, the grey eyes almost expressionless.

  Elise sat herself on the sofa and he took a chair, and her throat ached for the many evenings they had shared the sofa, with his fingers threading through the softness of her hair against his shoulder.

  He drank his coffee in silence and put the cup down. It seemed he wasn't going to help her at all. He looked up at her and waited with a studied politeness that was close to insult.

  Her fingers tightening about her empty cup, she plunged straight in with the thing that was most stingingly in her mind, creating the deepest hurt and anger.

  'When you left—for Wellington,' she began, 'the last thing you said to me ... it was insulting and unfounded. This baby is yours, Shard. It's quite impossible that it could be anyone else's—and I resent very much the suggestion you—you seemed to be making about Cole and me.'

  His expression didn't change. 'All right,' he said, 'I accept that—and apologise.'

  The effect was as though he had shrugged and apologised for some minor mistake or social slip. She looked at him incredulously and her lips parted in a silent protest. She was filled with confused anger. Finally she managed, 'Is that all you have to say?'

  'What else would you like me to say? I'm very sorry —I was wrong and stupid and I won't do it again? Is that enough?'

  'Yes,' she said, 'it's enough.' Knowing that it wasn't, that nothing would ever be enough but it was useless to ask for more.

  'Was there something else?' he asked.

  'Yes,' she said. 'Did you offer me a divorce because you thought that I wanted to marry someone else?'

  'No.'

  Then why?'

  'Because I would rather we made a clean break now than see you gradually getting tired of expending your wifely devotion on a man who can no longer give you what you want.'

  Her voice shook as she said, 'I don't give a damn for what you can give me. And I want no break, clean or otherwise, now or ever. I didn't marry you for your money or your success, whatever you think—you said I was frank with you, but I honestly don't know what you were talking about...'