by Anne Weale
Mrs Anderson always did full justice to her food, but Sarah was surprised at her mother’s readiness to join in the conversation. Far from being shy, she was unusually animated, contributing more to the various discussions than Sarah herself did.
Later, when they were alone in her mother’s bedroom, Mrs Anderson said, ‘What a shame about their other son being killed.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘She did...Mrs Kennedy. When we were having coffee in the big room, I asked if she had other children. She said Neal had two sisters and an elder brother who’d died in a climbing accident.’
‘Neal told me about him. I should have warned you, Mum.’
‘It was some time ago. I expect she’s learned to live with it. People have to, don’t they? We’ve had our sorrows too.’
Sarah wondered if her mother could really count the loss of her husband as a sorrow. Tonight she had glimpsed the woman her mother might have been if she hadn’t spent years under the thumb of a domestic tyrant. How could she sincerely mourn a man who had done that to her?
Presently, in her own room, Sarah prepared for bed, wondering if Neal would come to her. She felt uneasy about sleeping with him under his parents’ roof but knew that, if he did come, he would only have to kiss her to make her misgivings evaporate.
She was in bed, dipping into one of a stack of books on the night table, when there was a light tap at the door. She said a low-voiced, ‘Come in.’
There was no suggestion of stealth about the way he walked in and closed the door.
‘Did you enjoy the evening?’ Neal spoke quietly but not in an undertone. He had been wearing a tie which he began to unwind as he crossed to the bed and sat down beside her.
‘Yes, I did...and so did Mum. I’ve never seen her so animated. She doesn’t normally drink wine so that may have had something to do with it.’
‘She didn’t have very much. It was probably more the effect of a complete change of scene and some new people to talk to. She’s been in a rut. You both have. It’s not a good place to be.’
He reached for one of her hands, turning it palm up and looking at the lines on it. ‘Shall I tell you your fortune?’
Even this playful touch of his fingers was enough to quicken her pulses. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a clairvoyant as well as a doctor and columnist.’
‘I can foretell the immediate future. You’re going to sleep well in spite of it being a strange bed. Tomorrow night you’re going to have dinner alone with a man who thinks you are far more beautiful than you realise.’
‘Oh, Neal...’ Longing to tell him she loved him, she leaned forward to clasp her hands at the back of his neck.
The bedclothes, which had been pulled up to her chest, fell away. She was wearing a nightgown she had seen in a charity shop and been unable to resist. The top was made of exquisitely fine dove-grey lace, shaped to outline her breasts. The rest was pale peach silk-satin. It was a honeymoon nightie that, new, must have cost the earth. She had paid the price of four cups of coffee for it because, said the woman in the shop, some of their customers didn’t like the idea of wearing what she had called ‘other people’s intimate garments’.
Sarah had had no such scruples. Very carefully, she had washed and pressed the luxurious garment, and now was rewarded by the way Neal was looking at her.
Gently, he took her wrists and drew them away from his neck and placed them on her lap. Then he took the fine rolled ribbon straps of the nightgown and edged them over the curves of her shoulders before slowly and carefully lowering the delicate lace as if he were peeling the skin of some rare exotic fruit.
The heat in his eyes and the controlled precision of his fingers made her tremble, her throat tight and dry with excitement while another part of her moistened and quivered in mounting anticipation.
Neal closed his eyes, his fingertips exploring her soft curves like those of a sightless person feeling the shape and smoothness of a sculpture.
Sarah’s breathing quickened. Instinctively she arched her spine, her head falling back, her eyes closing in sensuous enjoyment.
And then, where his fingers had been, she felt first the warmth of his breath and, tantalising moments later, the warmer pressure of his lips. A shaft of intense physical pleasure shot through her body, making her give a long shuddering gasp.
Blindly she reached for his shoulders, needing something to cling to in the wild white water rush of feelings beyond her control.
The following evening, after a day spent showing Mrs Anderson some of the sights of London, Neal took Sarah to a small but elegant restaurant where they were shown to a table separated from its neighbours by partitions upholstered, like the banquettes, with dark green velvet.
Eating an avocado salad garnished with green olives stuffed with white cheese topped with glistening dark grains of caviare, Sarah said, ‘It was kind of you to organise such a good sight-seeing tour for Mum. You must have seen all those places a hundred times.’
‘I enjoyed seeing it through her eyes. Living in London, it’s easy to become blasé. Another time I’ll take you on a tour of my own favourite places, but I didn’t think they were suitable for your mother’s first circuit.’
‘She’s going to find life at home very dull after all this excitement.’
‘Life doesn’t have to be dull for anyone,’ said Neal. ‘I think she should be encouraged to be a lot more active both physically and mentally. Would you mind if I gave her a pep talk?’
‘Of course not. In the past I have tried to get her to go to evening classes and so on. She’s always resisted my efforts. Perhaps you can succeed where I failed.’
‘It wouldn’t surprise me if Grandpa took her to task while they’re having supper together. He has a bee in his bonnet about people not wringing every last ounce of interest and enjoyment out of life. He hates the prospect of dying and missing all the exciting developments being forecast.’
‘He’s a wonderful old man...and you’re going to be the same,’ she said, smiling across the table. ‘It’s obvious you have a lot of his genes in you.’
‘I’d like to think so.’
A waiter removed their plates and another refilled the wine glasses. For their main course they had both chosen poached fresh salmon.
Having eaten it, Sarah said, ‘I don’t think I can manage a pudding.’
‘Nor can I. We’ll have coffee, please,’ Neal told the waiter.
When it had come, with a dish of hand-made chocolates, he said, ‘I’ve been waiting for this moment all day. I’ve never been here before but I was told it was the right kind of place to ask the woman you love if she’ll marry you. Will you, Sarah?’
CHAPTER TEN
IT TOOK several seconds for the momentous question to sink in. In unguarded moments she had let herself daydream about it, but never really believed it would happen.
Now it had and she didn’t know what to say. In her heart, she wanted to say yes. But her head counselled caution. She was not, had never been truly independent. Before she was fully grown up and able to take control of her life, she had relinquished that freedom.
‘You do love me, don’t you?’ Neal asked.
‘You know I do,’ she said quietly. ‘But it isn’t as simple as that. There are other people to consider.’
He was silent, watching her, his expression more guarded than a few moments earlier.
‘Your parents have been very nice to me, but I can’t believe that they aren’t secretly concerned,’ she went on. ‘I might look a girl to your grandfather, but not to them. They must guess I’m older than you are.’
‘My mother asked how old you were and what you looked like before she met you.’
‘What did she say when you told her my age?’
‘What would you expect her to say?’
‘If Matthew was involved with a woman of forty, I’d try to dissuade him from getting too serious.’
‘From what you tell me, Matthew hasn’t got his own life toge
ther yet. It’s important to do that before asking someone to share your life. I have. My mother knows that. She trusts my judgment. It would be nice if you did,’ he added dryly.
‘That’s not quite fair. You know I trust you. I wouldn’t have gone to Nagarkot if I hadn’t. But nobody’s judgment is sound when they’re in the grip of...when they’re feeling the way we both do at the moment.’
‘I’m expecting to feel like this for the rest of my life.’ He reached across the table to capture the hand with which she was fingering the stem of her wine glass. ‘My parents’ feelings have lasted. Why shouldn’t ours?’
‘Your parents were in their twenties when they got married. Your mother told Mum that and she passed it on to me when I was making her bed. They had no emotional baggage to complicate matters.’
‘Are you saying that part of your heart still belongs to Matthew’s father?’
‘No, that’s not what I meant at all. If it weren’t for Matthew, I wouldn’t remember clearly what Matt looked like. I think I was more in love with love than with him. If he hadn’t been killed, if I hadn’t had his baby, I would have grown out of loving him. That’s the honest truth of it.’
‘And now you’re afraid that you’ll grow out of loving me?’
‘No,’ she said vehemently. ‘Never.’ Then wished she had held her tongue. To try to persuade him to wait while admitting how much she cared for him was contradictory.
Quickly, before he could latch on to the inconsistency, she said, ‘You’ve been very sweet to Mum, but having her for a few days isn’t the same as having a mother-inlaw on your hands for the rest of her life.’
Neal was still holding her hand. ‘The time may come when my parents need looking after. Would that bother you?’
‘That’s different.’
‘No, it isn’t. The only important issue is whether you want to marry me. That’s what you have to decide. Everything else is irrelevant.’
‘Matthew isn’t irrelevant. He’s been the centre of my life since I was eighteen...the person who kept me going when I felt it might never come right.’
‘Irrelevant was the wrong word,’ Neal conceded. ‘Of course he and your mother are important to you... very important. But it’s your life, your future we’re talking about. Our future. I’ve waited a long time to find you and now that I have I don’t want to hang about. I want us to be together all the time, not in snatches.’
‘You make it sound so simple. It isn’t. I have a business to run. I can’t just walk out on Naomi. I wouldn’t expect you to drop your column for The Journal.’
‘I don’t expect you to drop anything, Sarah. But you don’t need to go on living where you are and neither do I. We can pick a place that we both like and work from there. That may take a little time to set up. Meanwhile I want to be able to call you my wife...to share a bedroom openly.’
‘Neal, you’re rushing me. I need more time. Until tonight I didn’t know if you were serious, or if it was just an affair.’
‘It was never “just an affair”, but I knew you were hiding things from me. Now there are no more secrets, why must we wait?’
‘I think you should meet my son, and Matthew needs to meet you. For him to come home, after a year away, and find me considering marriage...it would be a terrific shock. It could alienate him.’
Neal’s lips compressed but he didn’t say what he was thinking. She could guess what that was: that Matthew’s reaction was a matter of indifference to him.
‘Please...try to understand...try to be patient. There are so many complications. To rush into marriage would be madness.’
He let go of her hand and leaned back against the banquette.
‘If that’s the way you want it, that’s how it will have to be,’ he said, with a slight shrug. ‘When is he due to get home?’
‘I’m not sure exactly. Before Christmas.’
‘What do you do about Christmas? Link up with Naomi? Go to a hotel?’
‘Naomi spends Christmas with her daughter. We spend it quietly at home. What do you do?’
‘We have a big family Christmas, starting with a party for close friends the night before Christmas Eve. Why don’t the three of you join us? There won’t be room in the house because my sisters and their families will be staying with us, but there’s a small hotel very near where you’d be comfortable. If you are going to marry me—subject to your son’s approval—it would be a good time to get to know your future in-laws.’
‘It’s not a question of “subject to my son’s approval”,’ Sarah said, in a low voice. ‘But how would you feel, in his place, if you came home from abroad and found everything in upheaval and someone you’d never met taking over your mother’s life...because that’s how he’d be bound to see it. Children with only one parent are more possessive than children with two parents and brothers and sisters. It’s inevitable. Except for his teachers, Matthew never had any masculine input in his early life.’
‘That isn’t going to happen now. He’s a man, not a teenager. How he runs his life is his business, not mine. We’re going to meet as equals, not in some quasistepfather-stepson relationship.’
As he spoke, Neal looked at his watch. ‘If you’ve had enough coffee, let’s go, shall we?’ He signalled to their waiter.
While he paid the bill, Sarah was miserably aware that, by not giving him the unequivocal ‘yes’ he had expected and wanted, she had wounded him deeply. At the same time she found it hard to understand why he couldn’t see the impossibility of doing that.
He dismissed the impediments to their marriage as if they were trivialities. But they weren’t. Every day marriages foundered on much smaller obstacles to happiness.
They had walked to the restaurant and, the night being mild and dry, she had expected they would walk back. But outside the restaurant Neal raised his hand to a cruising taxi. As it drew up beside them, he opened the door for her and gave his address to the driver while she was stepping inside.
Throughout the short drive, they sat apart from each other, not speaking. It wasn’t exactly a quarrel, but suddenly an abyss had opened between them and she didn’t know how to bridge it.
Outside his house, Neal sprang out first and, turning, offered his hand to her. But she knew it had no significance. He had grown up under the influence of people with traditional ideas on good manners and chivalry towards women was as deeply ingrained in him as in his grandfather.
She waited while he paid the fare. As the cab drew away, she said, ‘Thank you for taking me out, Neal. It was a delicious meal. I’m sorry that—’
He cut her short. ‘We’ve talked it through. Let’s give it a rest for a while.’
On the train going home, Mrs Anderson chattered almost without pause. Sarah listened and made a few comments but, although she tried to concentrate on what her mother was saying, her mind kept drifting away to dwell on how the situation would resolve itself.
Neal had kissed her goodbye, but only on the cheek. In the taxi to the station he had raised the subject of a London Christmas with her mother who, predictably, had been enthusiastic. But he hadn’t come to Sarah’s room the night before, nor had he said anything about when they would next see each other. She had hated saying goodbye with the abyss still yawning between them, even if the Christmas plan was intended as a bridge.
It was only towards the end of the journey that it struck her as strange that her mother, who by now had recapped almost every moment of the visit, had said nothing about the reason for it. Surely she must realise there was more than friendship between them?
At that moment, as if their mental processes had somehow become linked, Mrs Anderson said, ‘I thought, when he took you out last night, Neal might be going to pop the question. Anyone can see he’s keen on you.’
‘If he did, what would you want me to say, Mum?’
‘It’s not what I want, it’s what you want that matters. I’d miss you, I can’t deny it. But the way we live isn’t right, not for someone of your
age. You need a man in your life...a nice man who’ll be kind to you. When I married your father, I didn’t realise it’s kindness that counts in the long run. I was bowled over by his looks. I didn’t think about his nature. Your Neal’s got both...looks and a nice nature.’
‘He’s not my Neal, Mum. Did his mother say anything to you...about him and me?’
‘Nothing direct, but I could tell that she liked you. So she should. You’re solid gold, Sarah, and I don’t say that just because I’m your mum. There’s lots of girls, left as you were, who’d have dumped the baby on me and gone off and had a good time. And that’s what you deserve to have from now on. You’ve had your share of hard times. You deserve to be happy from now on.’
‘Do you think Matthew will like Neal?’
Her mother considered the question. ‘I expect he’ll be jealous at first. That’s only natural. He’s always come first with you. It’ll take time for him to get used to coming second.’
‘I wonder how much he’ll have changed?’ Sarah said thoughtfully. ‘I’m hoping he’ll have grown up. He wasn’t very mature when he went away.’
That evening, Neal rang to check that their return had gone smoothly.
‘Was there any news from Matthew when you got home?’ he asked.
‘Not yet. I’m just writing a thank-you letter to your parents,’ said Sarah.
‘I’ll call you tomorrow. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight,’ she echoed, hurt by the brevity and businesslike tone of the call, but knowing she had inflicted a much greater hurt on him by responding to his proposal with caution instead of the eagerness he had wanted and expected.
‘Neal, something is wrong,’ said Mrs Kennedy, the next time she and her son were alone together. ‘I’ve tried not to intrude in any of your lives since you’ve been adults, but perhaps if I’d asked Chris about his problems instead of maintaining my policy of non-interference...’ She left the rest in the air.