by Penny Jordan
His insinuations literally took her breath away, or rather the hard knot of anger that was gathering inside her chest was so huge that it all but choked her, making speech totally impossible. Inwardly she was fuming; and for the first time in her life Jessica realised why it was that some women felt the need to resort to acts of childish violence when confronted with an argument with a man. Right now there was nothing she would enjoy more than hurling the baking bowl at the arrogant dark head, but fortunately she managed to retain just enough sanity and self-control to withstand the impulse.
Turning her back on him, she took off her protective apron and said curtly, ‘I’m going to wash up and then I’m going upstairs to get ready. If you prefer to drive to Justine’s on your own, I quite understand.’
She could tell from the sound of his voice that his mouth had hardened, even without turning to look, and she shivered to realise how intimately she must have observed him on a thousand unrealised occasions to know with such certainty what physical expression any certain nuance in his voice represented.
Two hours later they were all ready. Both boys were dressed in clean T-shirts and jeans worn over their bathing trunks, since Lyle had explained that his sister’s garden possessed a small although unheated swimming pool. Lyle himself was wearing close-fitting stone-washed jeans in an indeterminate colour somewhere between olive and stone with a matching shirt, the sleeves rolled up and the buttons unfastened halfway down his chest.
Jessica was the last to appear downstairs, to be greeted by a malely impatient ‘Hooray’ from James.
She now knew exactly why mothers were always the last to be ready, having had her own preparations constantly interrupted by cries of ‘Where are my new jeans/T-shirt/favourite socks?’
Now she was ready however, and her aqua cotton jeans and matching T-shirt drew a totally unexpected and slightly embarrassed compliment from Stuart, which she accepted gravely, hiding a tiny smile at James’s robust and brotherly, ‘It’s soppy telling girls that they look nice.’
She turned automatically to look at Lyle, her smile fading as she saw that he was frowning. For a moment she had almost forgotten their passage of arms in the kitchen. Deriding herself for ever having expected him to share in her covert amusement, as though they were in fact two adults intimately united in amused pride of their offspring, she hurried over to the refrigerator extracting the soufflé and deftly placing it in the coolbag.
‘Why’s it got that paper round it?’ James asked curiously, watching her, listening as she explained the purpose of the grease-proof collar.
Lyle was the last to leave the house, and Jessica fully expected him to walk over to his own car once he had locked the door.
She unlocked her car and waited while James and Stuart put their towels in the boot, and was just about to get in when she realised that Lyle had joined them.
She hesitated, torn between offering to let him drive and the wilful urge not to. Why should she go out of her way to placate him? To do what he as a man no doubt expected her to do? It was her car, she reminded herself sturdily, inwardly acknowledging as she swung her door open that had they not had that quarrel earlier, she would probably never have even thought twice about offering to let him drive.
Pushing down the back of her seat she helped the boys clamber into the back, and then got in closing the door and starting the engine.
Lyle, who had been standing by the boot, got into the passenger seat without any comment. It was impossible to tell from where he had been standing whether he had expected to drive or not, but Jessica suspected that he must have done. In her experience very few men could endure being driven by a woman, especially when that woman was the man’s wife. Even so, he made no comment as she backed out of the drive and turned the car in the right direction.
As she had predicted, having the hood down produced a deliciously cooling breeze, which since she had already taken the precaution of restraining her hair did not cause her any inconvenience.
They had the narrow country roads almost entirely to themselves, the boys keeping up a steady flow of chatter for the first few miles, although Lyle was completely silent. When she had the opportunity to take her eyes off the road and dart a brief glance at him, Jessica was chagrined to discover that he appeared to be fast asleep, his head turned away from her, his body moving easily with the car, his long legs stretched out it in front of him.
‘Dad’s gone to sleep,’ James commented, confirming her own suspicions.
So much for her determination not to let him drive! Almost she was grinding her teeth, resenting the way he seemed to have got the better of her. The childishness of her thoughts almost made her smile. What a ridiculous way to behave! She was supposed to be an adult; mature; her research and qualifications such that she of all people ought to have been able to anticipate and avoid the hazards of emotionally explosive situations, instead of which she appeared to be acting like a text-book case designed to reveal what the male sex commonly held to be the weaknesses of the feminine psyche. Frowning slightly, Jessica remembered how smugly superior she had felt in the past whenever Andrea had indignantly related to her how easily David could upset and irritate her. But Andrea was vulnerable because she loved David, and she, Jessica, had long ago seen how potentially dangerous and threatening loving a man could be to a woman who wished to retain her independence and self-respect. Love involved giving, bending, becoming pliant and responsive to another’s needs and desires. And wasn’t it because of that, and the terrible emotional devastation that could be wrought when one person ceased to love another, that she had turned away from the modern romantic ideal of love and turned instead towards the past and its more prosaic and firmer-founded alliances based on less ephemeral bonds?
She shivered, goosebumps puckering her skin even though she was not really cold.
Lyle woke up just as they were turning into Justine’s drive, stretching slowly and then sitting up. Had he really been asleep, or had he guessed why she had insisted on driving and pretended to be asleep accordingly?
Unless she asked him she was never likely to know, she reflected wryly as she stopped the car and got out.
She was just helping the boys out of the back when Justine appeared, a burly, deeply tanned, fair-haired man at her side.
Watching them together as Oliver greeted Lyle and then hugged both boys, Jessica was struck by the very evident affection that existed between them, something she had not expected from Justine’s offhand manner of mentioning her husband whenever he came into the conversation.
‘And this is Jessica?’
‘Ah ha, saving the best for last?’ Oliver grinned at her and then looked at Lyle asking, ‘Will I be safe if I kiss her?’
‘From me, yes,’ Lyle drawled in response, smiling mockingly at his sister as he added teasingly, ‘from Justine, I’m not so sure.’
For the first time since she and Lyle had married Jessica felt excluded; alien; overwhelmed by a deep sense of melancholy she was at a loss to understand.
She had got what she wanted from their marriage, and more; the boys’ affection for her was an added bonus. So why was she feeling so bereft?
‘Come on into the garden.’ Justine looked beyond her husband and brother and smiled at Jessica. ‘That looks like the soufflé. I’ll take it inside, shall I?’
While Oliver led Lyle and the boys round the side of the house to the back garden Jessica followed Justine inside.
Her kitchen overlooked the brick-paved area where they were having the barbecue and Justine grimaced faintly as she watched her son belly-flop into the pool and send a cascade of water up on to the terrace.
‘Little horror! It’s just as well Oliver’s home. He was beginning to get out of hand. Too much petticoat-government, Oliver says.’ She grinned again and added cheerfully, ‘Chauvinist.’ There wasn’t the slightest trace of resentment in her voice and Jessica was frankly puzzled. The very first time she had met Justine she had been struck by her forceful, direct
manner, and yet here she was apparently quite content—no, not merely content, but almost pleased—to hand over the reins of control to Oliver. And from the little she had seen of the latter, Jessica could not see him being a man who would wish or allow his wife to dominate him.
Almost as though she had been reading her mind Justine said resignedly, ‘I know what you’re thinking, Oliver and I are far too alike to be happily married, and perhaps we wouldn’t be if he didn’t spend so much time away working. As it is, when he does come back I’m quite happy to relax into the role of little woman and let him take charge. And Oliver, of course, is so used to being in command and telling others what to do that he wouldn’t take very kindly to a subservient role, I’m afraid. Even so one thing I will say for him is that he’s always willing to sit down and discuss any points of dispute. Unlike Lyle, he doesn’t have a temper.’ She pulled a face and admitted wryly, ‘Sometimes I wish he did have, I have to admit it gives me great pleasure to pull the tiger’s tail sometimes, especially where Lyle’s concerned. He gives such a magnificent lashing reaction, very male and affronted.’ Her eyes danced and Jessica couldn’t help grinning in response.
‘Oh ho, I think I hear a car,’ Justine announced. ‘Maybe it’s your sister. I won’t be a sec.’
It was Andrea, looking glowingly pregnant, and David, scowling slightly as he followed her and William into the kitchen.
‘I think I’m about finished in here. Let’s go out into the garden and get a drink,’ Justine suggested, shepherding them all towards the door.
She was magnificently organised, Jessica acknowledged, observing the crisp salads set out on the long trestle table.
‘Everyone’s here now,’ Justine announced. ‘I think you’d better start barbecuing, Oliver, before the kids get too tired and hungry.’ She stopped to smile at William and then took him over to introduce him to her own son, leaving Oliver to make sure that everyone had drinks.
As far as everyone else was concerned, lunch seemed to be an unmarred success. Even Andrea looked unusually relaxed; only she seemed unable to settle, Jessica thought morosely, watching as all four boys stripped off jeans and T-shirts and headed for the pool.
‘God, where do they get their energy?’ Oliver commented watching them.
‘Do you really want to know?’ Justine riposted. ‘At the last count Peter had consumed at least four beefburgers, plus ice cream, plus raspberry soufflé.’
‘Don’t tell me any more,’ Oliver begged, eyeing his son’s wiry body as he added plaintively, ‘if he eats as much as that, how come he’s so thin?’ He eyed his own sturdy waistline wryly and added, ‘I only have to look at ice cream…’
‘Peter is thin because he works it off. Exercise is the thing,’ Justine told him reprovingly.
Only half listening to their bantering, Jessica watched the pool. Lyle was with the boys and they were perfectly safe, but in any case it was not they that drew her eye but Lyle himself. White swimming-shorts moulded his body, his skin sleek and tautly muscled as he hauled himself up out of the pool.
Her breath seemed to catch in her throat, her whole body reverberating with a kind of pain that ripped apart the flimsy delusion she had been hiding behind.
From a distance she heard Andrea speaking to her and turned her head towards her sister in mute enquiry.
‘I was just apologising for being such a fool about David,’ she laughed softly and then added, ‘even if I hadn’t already realised how silly I’d been, just seeing you look at Lyle the way you were doing then would have told me. I never thought I’d see the day when you were so deeply in love that you couldn’t tear your eyes away from a man, Jess.’
Somewhere deep inside her the pain grew and spread, crying out a silent denial, her body shuddering with reaction and shock.
‘Jess?’ Concern quickened Andrea’s voice, her hand reaching out to touch her. ‘Are you all right?’
‘It’s the heat, it made me feel dizzy, that’s all.’
Instantly Andrea gave her a speculative look. ‘You’re not…’
Sensing what was coming, Jessica quickly shook her head. Andrea thought she was pregnant! My God, if only her sister knew the irony of what she was suggesting. It was as impossible for her to be pregnant as it was for her to love Lyle. Slowly her mind faltered to a standstill, her stomach churning restlessly. She got up, filled with a sudden need to escape from the others; to be alone somewhere quiet where she could sort out her confused thoughts.
While Andrea’s attention was distracted by William she got up and walked quickly away, heading for the lower end of the garden.
A trellis smothered in old-fashioned perfumed roses separated the lawns from a small orchard area. As she leaned against the trunk of one of the trees the sounds of muted laughter and splashing from the pool seemed to belong to another world. She was, she recognised shakily, suffering from acute shock, her skin clammy to her own touch, her body icy cold inside despite the smotheringly oppressive heat of the afternoon. All at once her nerve-endings felt raw and exposed, her skin too thin and sensitive to bear the atmospheric pressure crushing down on it. She felt hot and cold at the same time, crampingly sick and totally unable to come to terms with the truth that hammered remorselessly inside her head, demanding acknowledgement.
She was no longer an island, complete within herself, able to exist and function wholly without the necessity of having another person with whom to share her life. Without her knowing how it had happened Lyle had pierced the defensive bubble inside which she had thought herself so safely encapsulated. To describe the onset of anguish and anger that possessed her when she tried to contemplate her life without him as ‘love’ came nowhere near encompassing the intensity of her feelings.
Fool, fool, she cursed herself inwardly, knowing now that the signs had been there for her to read almost from the first time she set eyes on him, but she had blindly, even wilfully, deliberately ignored them.
That immediate, and yes, half-intoxicating antipathy she had experienced and ignored; that alone should have warned her. Amused indifference was her normal reaction to angry males, and she had known enough of them. Men often became angry when they discovered how impervious she was to them.
She had not simply married him because of Andrea, she was forced to recognise that now and although she had not consciously formed her decision on the strength of their first meeting, subconsciously…
She stiffened as she heard footsteps on the brick path. Had Lyle noticed her absence and come after her? The sharpness of her disappointment when she realised that the intruder was David increased her annoyance with herself. It was insupportable that a woman with her training and knowledge should have been stupid enough to do the one thing she herself, in her books, preached against so earnestly. It was her own thoughts rather than David’s presence that made her twist uncomfortably against the tree. Jessica had always prided herself on her honesty and her very real belief in what she wrote, and now she was being forced to confront the fact that she herself had fallen helplessly into the trap Nature wove so treacherously for the unwary. She did not even have the excuse of having been encouraged to love Lyle. After all, he had made no bones at all about his feelings towards her—or rather his lack of them.
‘Well, well, all alone without your new husband. What interpretation are we to put on that, I wonder?’
As always, David’s slightly unctuous manner irritated her. Today of all days she felt ill-inclined to humour him and instead snapped crossly, ‘None at all, David. I simply wanted some peace and quiet,’ she told him pointedly.
He laughed, or sniggered rather, and mentally Jessica contrasted the grating effect of that sound on her eardrums when compared with the richness and warmth of Lyle’s laughter. Not that she had heard it very often, of course, and when she had it had been generated by one or other of his sons.
Stop being so maudlin, she berated herself, moving away from the tree-trunk intent on rejoining the others. She had no wish to stay here alon
e with David of all people.
‘Not so fast.’ His arm across the arched opening through the rose trellis prevented her from going through, but before she had had time to form the scathing rebuke rising to her lips, he continued silkily, ‘Andrea will have it that you’re desperately in love with your rather dour husband, but you and I know better, don’t we, Jess? You aren’t capable of love, it’s against all those high-minded principles of yours. You married him to stop Andrea from finding out about us.’
He was so close to the truth and yet so far away from it, that Jessica was tempted to laugh. If he had confronted her with those words only a matter of days ago she would have agreed, albeit with some modifications; but now she knew just how wrong he was, and ironically how very much she wished that he might have been right.
Even so, it gave her a degree of rather wry pleasure to be able to say to him quite honestly, ‘You’re wrong, David, I do love him.’
She held his eyes and had the satisfaction of seeing his glance drop away first, but not before she had seen the sudden flare of rage spring to life in them.
All at once she was acutely conscious of how secluded they were, and as though somehow in loving Lyle she had become acutely vulnerable in a way she had not experienced before, suddenly she was uneasily aware that she might have been wiser not to push David quite so hard.
‘You bitch! You enjoyed telling me that, didn’t you?’
Breathing hard, he grabbed her with painful fingers that dug into her arms and refused to release her no matter how hard she tried to push him off. The pressure of his mouth against her own nauseated and affronted her. She kicked out wildly at his shin, but it was not her own frantic attempts to evade him that brought her freedom, but Lyle’s totally unexpected presence, his face blackly grim as he said curtly to David, ‘I think you’d better go back to your wife.’
To Jessica’s relief, her brother-in-law made no attempt to argue, simply going back the way he had come.