The Wall: A Vintage Contemporary Romance
Page 16
That accomplished, she leaned over the side of the tub and turned the water taps on full blast. The roaring, gushing, splashing sound of the water rushing to fill the tub had her jumping in consternation. That sound must be clearly audible throughout the empty house. Greg couldn’t help but hear it. She sat back on the floor by the tub and listened anxiously.
In what seemed to her to be an amazingly short amount of time, Greg was pounding on the door and bellowing with rage when he found it locked. “Sara! Dammit, Sara, unlock this door!” She jumped with shock at the loud booming sound the hammering at the door produced. He must have taken the stairs two at a time to get up here so fast. “Sara, if you don’t get over to this door and unlock it right this minute, I’m going to break it down!” He paused a moment, and after thinking it over, she thought the prudent thing to do would be to open the door. She inched carefully over as his voice changed and became suddenly very anxious. “Sara? Can you hear me? Are you all right?—Oh, thank God!” That was as she clicked the lock open and turned the knob.
His expression of relief, however, soon turned to anger, and he took her by the shoulder to shake her hard. “You stupid, selfish, idiotic—why the hell did you do that when you know you aren’t strong enough to take a shower safely on your own? What if you’d got dizzy and fell? What if you’d hit your head in the shower and drowned before I could get to you? Of all the imbecilic things to do, this really—”
Infuriatingly easy tears spilled over on to her cheeks at this rough handling of her body. She was still sore in her muscles from the fever, and so very weak that her knees buckled up on her and she slid to the floor again, right out of his grasp. She crouched on the floor, crying, and Greg suddenly knelt down beside her to try and take her in his arms.
At this, though, she turned on him and spat with fury, “How dare you touch me like that! How dare you lecture to me! Just who gives you the right, mister? Who the hell died and left you almighty God of the universe? Don’t you think I’m capable of a rational decision on my own? I’ve managed pretty well for twenty-eight years without you, and haven’t died yet! Kindly credit me with a modicum of sense, sir, and look around you. I’m taking a bath, not a stupid shower, and I can manage quite well without your help!”
Her voice rang out over the sound of gushing water, and she was shaking with the extent of her own outrage and fury. Still, one part of her mind bemoaned her loss of temper as she watched Greg’s face grow rigid at her words. He looked like hard grey granite, but she looked into his eyes and saw a molten hot rage. He spoke quietly in contrast to her agitated outburst, and it was somehow more frightening than anything her anger could produce. The words came from between clenched teeth. “I suggest, madam, that before you start rejecting help out of hand, you may wait until some is offered to you. I had no intention of doing so.” With that, he stood and left the room as swiftly as he had entered it.
Shaken, tired, depressed beyond words, Sara crouched for some time afterwards on the floor, crying her eyes out.
It was an ordeal to take a bath, but she managed it by going slowly and resting often. She even managed to soap her hair clean, though there was no pleasure in it any more. Then, sitting on the bathroom stool, she carefully towelled herself dry and cursed her shaking hands. She didn’t want to be weak. She couldn’t afford to be weak. She was on her own, like she had always been before. She had to handle things alone.
She barely glanced at the mirror as she carefully walked by. She had put on her housecoat and wrapped her hair up in a towel. Even so, the pale, huge-eyed apparition, a ghostly caricature of herself that had been reflected, made her pull up with shock. Her cheekbones were sharp and protruding, and her jawline more pronounced. She had noticed in the bathtub that she had lost weight, and it showed in her face. She looked at herself unemotionally before going on to the bedroom. After that first shock, it didn’t really matter to her what she looked like. In fact, she didn’t really care about anything. She longed to sleep.
Her wet hair had to be taken care of, though, and she plugged the hand dryer in a socket in front of the full-length mirror, sinking with trembling limbs on to the floor in front of it. Then she just sat there and looked at herself dispiritedly, wondering how she was going to get up the strength to hold her hands above her head for any length of time. A flicked glance at the doorway had her stiffening defensively. Greg stood watching her, his face inscrutable, impassive, serious.
Sara switched on the dryer with shaking hands and began to hold it to her wet hair. He just stood watching for a while, then the dryer was plucked from her hands and he was pulling up the chair that had been by the bed. She stared, yearning, aching for something, some word or touch, but what she said instead was, “I’ll do it on my own, thank you,” and the words sounded cold.
His response came tiredly, “Don’t be a fool, Sara. Give me the brush, will you?” Hardly realising what she was doing, she slowly handed him the brush. He turned the warm blowing air on to her head and began to rhythmically brush the thick strands out to aid the process. It was hypnotising, relaxing, comforting, and he was very gentle, teasing out the snarls so carefully, she never felt any pain. At first she sat with her slender shoulders stiff and her face wooden, but she was so tired, and the continued motion of his hands felt so good that she gradually sank down until her cheek rested on his knee.
A drop of wetness fell on his slacks and soaked into the material, then another followed. If Greg noticed, he never said a thing, and Sara soon stopped crying. Really, this was a very weak habit to get into, this crying all the time, she thought. I’ve cried more in the past week or two than I’ve cried in years. It will have to stop. It’s got out of hand.
She knew why it had got out of control. It had happened at the same time her emotions had gone out of control. It had happened when she had met Greg, had become involved with a total stranger. It happened every time a barrier came up between them, for one reason or another. It happened every time he walled himself off from her.
Right now, he seemed a hundred thousand miles away. He was helping her and being very good and gentle about it, too, but his eyes in the mirror looked to be withdrawn. It made his ministrations even more bittersweet and painful. She resented that look terribly. It told her that he was somewhere else, but it didn’t tell her where, and she was too tired to go after him. She didn’t have the strength to reach out. All she could do was lay her head against his knee, dumbly accepting his moving hands, while her heart bled all over the floor. She was the loneliest person in the world.
She was also wrapped up so tightly in her own miserable emotions that the realisation that he had switched off the hair-dryer and was now only brushing her hair came over her very gradually. She became aware of the fact that her hair was totally dry, but he continued to brush and smooth it off her forehead anyway. She wondered if he was so far away that he didn’t even realise that her hair was dry. It felt too good, though, for her to open her mouth and spoil it, so she kept silent and very still.
The conviction that he was far away in his thoughts left her totally unprepared for his sudden movement. The shock of him scooping her up in his arms to lift her on to his lap held her still for a moment. He just held her, cradled her, and rocked very slightly back and forth. It was so exactly what she needed that she melted completely, put her arms around his neck and buried her face against him. It hurt so, and yet seemed to be the balm her bruised self needed.
They sat this way for a very long time. Finally Greg stirred and picked her up firmly as he stood. His grip was so decisive, she didn’t have any choice but to comply with it. The question of her objecting however, was academic. It never occurred to her. She was too tired, too passive, too much in need of whatever attention he would see fit to give her.
He carried her over to the bed and gently laid her down on it. “You need a clean nightgown, don’t you?” he asked her softly, and she nodded, glancing at the widening gap of her dressing gown. He disappeared and came back w
ith a filmy garment held in one hand, and he insisted on helping her with it, which was all for the good, since she didn’t know if she could manage on her own. Then he sat down on the bed, stroked with an absent hand the side of her cheek, and stared frowningly into her eyes. “We have to talk.”
Her throat was dry and she had to clear it before anything would even come out. “I know.”
“Would you like to wait until you’re feeling stronger?” His consideration, after the explosive clash they had just recently had, jarred her up. She nodded, lips drawn tight to keep them from trembling. “All right. Are you tired now, or would you like for me to help you downstairs?”
“If you don’t mind,” she whispered, sounding terribly humble. “I think I’ll take a nap now—I’m tired.”
“Call me when you wake up. I’ll be back with supper later on in the evening.” He stood and turned to go, and she rolled over in the bed to stare dumbly at the wall until she did finally go to sleep.
He was up later, like he had promised her, and he shook her shoulder gently to wake her up. She sat, rubbing her eyes, and took in the loaded tray hungrily. Greg sat and kept her company, though they didn’t say much. It would all be said later. For the moment, they just existed together in silence.
When bedtime came, much later, Greg came into the room and took his black robe and started to head out the door. Sara watched him with apprehensive eyes, and called out before he could get far. He turned around to her with an obvious reluctance.
“Are…you coming to bed soon?” she asked him quietly. It was the only way she could think to frame the question in her mind.
He looked down at the robe held in his hands, the posture throwing his eyes into shadow so that she couldn’t read the expression in them. “I thought I’d sleep in the other room tonight.”
She felt shattered. “Greg, did you sleep with me when I was sick? I remember you being there.”
He didn’t look up. “Yes.”
Her voice trembled with the effort of asking the question. “Then would you please tell me why you aren’t sleeping in here tonight?”
He did look up at that with a searching, questioning glance, and his answer came slowly. “I thought it would be best if we were apart until we had a chance to—talk things out.”
It would be disastrous, she sensed intuitively, if they did that. He was retreating behind the wall. It was his instinctive escape to isolation. If he slept away tonight, then any hope of a future together would be destroyed. A sense of desperation came over her, and it gave her the courage to blurt out, “Please—I want you to stay.” She couldn’t say anything after that, because that said it all, and she watched him with pleading eyes.
She saw him close his eyes and swallow hard. Then he was flinging the robe on to the chair and coming towards her, shedding his clothes and climbing into the bed. A muscled arm flexed, reached and turned the bedside lamp off. He pulled her into his arms and curved his long body to fit into the curve of hers. Warmth and relief swept over her, and she was able to relax enough to get sleepy.
She suddenly whispered into the darkness, “Greg?”
His answering whisper was immediate. “What?”
“I’m sorry I yelled at you this afternoon. I have a nasty temper, I know, and I didn’t mean what I said.” Her body tensed; it was suddenly very important for him to realise that before she let herself sleep.
“Hush, Sara. I’m sorry, too. Relax and go to sleep, sweetheart, we’ll talk later.” That was all he said as he hugged her convulsively against his chest, then relaxed his hold again, but it was enough. The tension seemed to ease up and they were both soon asleep.
Chapter Nine
By unspoken mutual consent, they kept to light matters when they conversed the next day. Sara recognised what they both were doing: they were both giving each other breathing space. They touched each other often, as if they had to convince each other of something, of what she couldn’t say. She was full of nameless fears, for she sensed something despairing in Greg’s attitude, something desperate in his eyes, though his face was calm and serene enough.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that the world was going to end, everything was just going to fall apart, and on the surface life seemed just fine. It made her want to scream in terror, and all she did was smile at Greg in response.
That evening, they both sat in front of the fireplace and sipped cups of coffee. The supper meal had been almost totally silent and, for Sara, very uncomfortable. She searched for things to say, and came up with nothing. The silence wasn’t the kind of companionable quiet that comes from a peaceful feeling or a longstanding relationship. It was the tense-filled silence that preludes something violent, a tropical storm, a wild destroying tornado, death. Sara shook herself hard at this and deliberately thought of something else.
Greg’s face flickered with the light thrown from the flames. His dark eyes caught the colour and reflected it. It seemed as if he had two tiny twin flames of his own, deep inside. His face revealed nothing to her; it rarely did. That was a good trick he had learned as a criminal lawyer, she thought grimly, that ability to hide one’s emotions behind a face of granite stone. She wanted to slap it off his face, to shout, to plead, to go and crawl into a corner and lick her wounds like a hurt animal. She wanted to walk out the door without a second look back, uncaring and without regret. She sipped her coffee instead.
When her own voice sounded in the quiet, so still room, she jumped with surprise as much as Greg did. “Please,” she said quietly. “I know there’s something on your mind that’s bothering you. Could we talk now?”
He regarded her from under lowered brows, then nodded heavily. Still, he didn’t speak for some time, and when he did, she spilled some of her coffee from the shock of his words. “I was married once,” he admitted harshly. Sara automatically reached for a napkin to mop up the hot drops sprinkled on the floor.
“How long ago?” she asked him simply. It was indicative of the stern control she had to exercise over herself. She had nearly reached over to hit him. Why hadn’t he told her before? Why the hell hadn’t he waited for her? The irrationality of that thought made her smile to herself, wryly. What a fool she was over him!
“About eight years ago,” he replied, his voice flat and unemotional. The very passionless tone of his voice was terrible to hear. “I was very young, twenty-four. She was a year younger, just twenty-three.”
“You find it hard to talk about,” she said. It was a statement, not a question, and he nodded without surprise at her perceptiveness. “What happened?”
“She was a beautiful little thing, and spoiled rotten, but of course I didn’t see that at first. All I saw were those big brown eyes and the golden mane of hair, and that naive sincere way she had of saying things. It was three years of hell,” he said, and he might have been talking about the weather. Sara winced, and his eyes caught the look. He stared right at her and let her see the bitterness he was fighting to control with every word. “Her father was rich, and he gave her everything she wanted. What I couldn’t afford to give her, whatever she had her heart set on, she would run to Daddy for. And there were other men. I didn’t find that out for about two years, though she’d been no virgin when I married her. And by that time I frankly didn’t care. Infatuation is a rotten basis for a serious relationship, and mine had died some time back.”
A log snapped in the fireplace, and fell through the grating to the hearth floor, shooting sparks high up the chimney. Beowulf was stretched out at her feet, and she left the corner of the couch that she had been curled up on, to go down beside him and pet his sleek side. He lifted his head, looked at her briefly, and plopped his head heavily down on her lap. Greg poured her more coffee. It could have been a cozy scene, and looked it. Advertisement material, she thought ruefully.
“You’d have had to have been a student in law school, right?” The gentle prodding worked, and he shook himself out of whatever reverie he had fallen into to continue.
On impulse, Sara reached out her hand, and he took it immediately to hold it hard. She had the funniest impression; she suspected that his disclosures were hurting her more than they were hurting him. She suspected that he was way ahead of her on many counts.
He was continuing. “The night Andrea died, I issued her an ultimatum. We had a few people staying for the weekend, and she’d sent off signals to one of our single guests all evening long. It was too much—right in front of me, and with a fellow I liked and respected. I couldn’t let her ruin him with her particular brand of mucky immorality,” the peculiar emphasis he was giving to each word made their meaning lash out with the sharpness of a whip, “so after our guests had gone up to bed, we had a confrontation downstairs. I told her that she could either stop her extra-marital activities and stay with me, or she could pack her bags and go, but either way I really didn’t give a damn. She was just furious! She spat poison at me for about an hour or so, I really don’t remember, then she went upstairs to pack. By that time we were doing fairly well financially, not as well as Andrea was used to, but we were able to afford a housekeeper and some daily help. It was the only thing that saved me later on, our housekeeper being up late in the kitchen and cleaning up things from that night’s dinner party.”