by Anne Styles
She hadn't left the estate for a couple of weeks when Charles sauntered into the pavilion one afternoon. After a long walk that morning she was tired, and had flopped out on the sofa in front of the fire Bernard lit for her every morning. In her sixth month, she was finally beginning to feel pregnant!
'I think you should see this, Sarah,' Charles put a newspaper down in front of her. 'It doesn't make very cheerful reading, but . . .' Sarah stared at the Unicorn. She hadn't seen a newspaper for ages - not since she had come to Hastings, she realized suddenly. It had become quite an event even to watch television somehow, and in any case the Unicorn was not her favourite paper.
'Why on earth should I need to read that rubbish?' she laughed lazily, sitting up and pushing her hair back from her flushed face. Really, she thought, she was getting almost too relaxed to move at all!
'Because it mentions someone we both know.' Charles opened it for her. 'I'm sorry, darling, but I think you should know the truth.'
'Truth? In the Unicorn! They don't know the meaning of the word!' Sarah picked up the paper and scanned the page. 'Oh, my God!' She dropped it again with a shriek and Charles reached out quickly, scooping her into his arms, frightened rigid at the sight of her ashen face.
Oscar-winning British film director Nick Grey frolics on a Rio beach with his latest love, Madeleine Miller. The randy director, not so long ago the lover of actress Sarah Campbell, is now said to be head-over-heels in love with his wife's best friend. Has he no shame? The couple are together in Brazil, where Nick is busy on his new film - but not too busy, it seems, for the beautiful Madeleine. The text seared her eyes wherever she looked, taunting her with the photograph of a laughing Nick with Madeleine in his arms. She knew Madeleine vaguely from the Wardour Street office. She remembered Nick saying that she was in LA because her marriage was in trouble but she had thought nothing of it. Yet all the time Nick had obviously been seeing her. All the time she had been. agonizing over telling him about his baby he had been seeing someone else!
'It can't be true, Charles!' she sobbed. 'It can't possibly be true! He loves me - only me!'
'Nick has never been the type to be faithful to one person,' Charles said. 'He's never believed in it. Look at the way he's deceived Diana all these years. He doesn't care, darling. Just be thankful you found out in time.'
'Charles! You surely don't believe all this rubbish, do you?' Sarah stared at him in astonishment. 'It's the Unicorn, for God's sake!'
'It's all true, Sarah,' Charles said quietly. 'I spoke to Jane this morning. Madeleine left her husband for Nick a few weeks ago. She went out to Brazil to join him. That's probably why you haven't heard from him. I bet he's too ashamed to write and tell you.'
'Oh, Charles, no! It can't be true! It can't be!' Sarah wept helplessly, hugged in Charles's arms.
For a few agonized moments he wondered if he had gone too far. But the photograph was genuine, and heaven sent. The sooner Sarah realized what Nick was like, the better, he justified piously to himself. She would soon get over him, and then he could ask her the one vital question he wanted to ask.
He quietly gave thanks to the persistent Maxie Moreton as he held Sarah tightly to him, revelling in the fact that for once she really needed him. Max had done everything he could have wished for, and, true or not, it was exactly what he needed at that point. He thought of all the letters he had intercepted in the last few weeks, and made a mental note to destroy them. Sarah wouldn't want them now, he thought.
'Charles, what am I going to do?' she agonized.
'Do?' Charles smiled down at her. 'I suggest you do absolutely nothing - apart from sending the bastard that ring back. Forget him, Sarah, he's not worth it!'
'I can't do that!' She wrenched away from him. 'He loves me. We're buying a house together, for God's sake!'
'So? Explain that, then!' Charles threw the paper at her. 'Photographs tell their own story, Sarah. Just look at it! Showing you a house is one thing, buying it is another thing altogether.'
'God! I wish I'd taken the chance and stayed in LA - even gone to Brazil with him.'
'You wouldn't be able to spend your entire life following Nick around just to keep him faithful,' Charles pointed out. 'And that's what it would entail. Face it, Sarah, he's no good for you.'
'I can't bear it, Charlie!' Sarah buried her face in the comfort of his soft pullover.
'I know, sweetheart, it's hard. But you have me, remember? And I won't let you down, I promise.'
'No, I know you won't.' Sarah wiped at her reddened eyes, and then tried to pull herself together - for the sake of the baby, she told herself as Charles quietly handed her a large linen handkerchief.
'Tonight we'll go out for dinner,' he suggested, surprised at his boldness. 'There's no way you're going to sit in here alone and mope about someone who doesn't deserve it. We'll drive over to the Manoir Quatre Saison, how about that?'
'Oh, Charles! Are you sure?' Sarah was doubtful. It would be a lovely treat, but she worried about her appearance in public far more these days. 'Someone might see me.'
'So what if they do? I'm single, don't forget, and so are you,' he reminded her. 'The papers have been trying to pair us off for months - what would be so unusual in our eating out together? Wear that pretty blue dress Catherine made for you, it would be a shame to waste it.'
'Are you sure I don't look too pregnant?' Sarah worried.
'My darling girl, you are pregnant!' Charles laughed. 'Maybe if the reporters find out they'll think it's mine - that would teach Nick a thing or two about leaving you to fend for yourself!'
'Well. . . OK, then, I suppose it can't do much harm,' she acquiesced. 'But I'll need an age to get ready. I'm out of practice at the make-up.'
'Rubbish! Anyway you hardly need any. I'll pick you up at seven-thirty.' Triumphant, he went back up to the house to make the reservation. A little more persuasion, he thought smugly, and Sarah would return Nick's ring - round one was definitely his!
CHAPTER 23
After that it seemed that life took on a different pattern, and suddenly Sarah went everywhere with Charles, even on short trips to the Continent, if he travelled there on business. It was as if he couldn't bear to leave her behind.
Finally she began to realize just how caring and solicitous of her Charles was, and how pleasant his lifestyle could be.
She truly loved the peace and quiet of Hastings in between the trips to Geneva and Brussels - the birth of a new foal in the stud, going racing with Charles and Rupert, all interspersed with endless talk of horses. She was grateful that her height and well exercised body made her pregnancy seem far less obvious, and she became expert at hiding it for the social occasions she attended with Charles. Even at six months very few people guessed at it, and she had the energy of two most of the time.
Slowly, the thought of Nick receded from her busy everyday thoughts, though at night he came back to her very distinctly, invading her sleep, making her ache to her very soul for him. She said nothing to Charles about him, but each and every night she prayed that the paper had been wrong and that Nick would come sailing in through the door one morning and everything would be as it was before. But there were no letters from him, and gradually she began to realize that Charles was right. Nick had replaced her in his affections.
Finally she made the decision and wrote, enclosing the ring she had loved so much. It hurt terribly for a while, as if she had cut herself in two, but she had the baby, kicking and very much alive inside her. Nick hadn't really left her, she tried to console herself when the pain got too much. He would always be with her in one way.
Charles deliberately filled her days and evenings with people and events until her head whirled - consulting her on dinner parties before he gave them, insisting that she was his hostess when he did. Her life was becoming Charles, she realized one morning as she strolled up to the house to swim in the pool, a daily habit now. He was even talking of joining her for the sessions with the childbirth teacher Richard Ar
chibald had found for her locally.
'Why don't we arrange for you to have your baby here at Hastings?' he had suggested only the day before. 'It would guarantee privacy for you - you'd never get that in a normal hospital.' A few weeks before she would have been horrified at the idea, now suddenly it seemed quite natural, and she had found herself telling him she would think about it. Maybe - now that Nick wasn't coming back for her - she would have her baby at Hastings, with Charles. He took so much care of her it seemed inevitable now.
Several times she was on the point of ringing Miriam Waterston, to find out what she knew, and then something always stopped her. It seemed so pathetic, somehow - to have to ask someone she didn't know that well about her own lover. Many times she longed for Cress - how much easier life would have been if Cress had been around to make her laugh, and simply just be sensible about things. Cress had a knack of putting things in perspective some- how. But she was away for a couple of months more, so that was right out of the question.
Charles quietly filled the bill for all manner of things, even though his care was almost too claustrophobic at times.
It was still a while, however, before he subtly brought up the question of marriage, and when he did, though she cheerfully laughed at the very idea, suddenly it wasn't quite so silly any more.
'Lady Sarah Hastings has a rather nice ring to it,' he said wistfully. 'I'd rather thought you were getting keener on the idea, Sarah?'
'Charlie, I'm just not ready for that yet,' Sarah stalled. 'Wait until I've had the baby, then perhaps I'll think about it.' Despite her misery over Nick, Hastings itself was certainly growing on her. She loved the gracious old house and was always avid to hear the history of it that Charles imparted so well. They spent hours together in the library, poring over all the old family records that he got out to show her, and were soon exploring the older and forgotten parts of the attics and cellars in search of more.
In doing so they came across all Charles's old baby equipment - cots, toys, even clothes put away by his cost-conscious mother - and Sarah swooped on them in delight. 'We'll get them cleaned up!' Charles declared, excited by her enthusiasm. 'How lovely to be able to use them again! The baby will seem like a real Hastings baby then.'
'A Hastings baby?' Sarah stared at him. Less than two months she had lived there, and it felt like years. She was comfortable, and she was beginning to admit that it felt like home. She had done nothing for herself since she had come to live there, and the only time she left the estate she was with Charles in the car, or in his helicopter. Her own car sat unused in one of the garages. Her furniture, all but a few treasured pieces, was in store, and she was certainly spending far more time in the main house these days than she did in the pavilion.
Now she couldn't do any significant work she was completely idle. Oscar had been cutting back on her prodigious workload for some time in anticipation of her move to America, so her disappearance off the working scene had not caused too many ripples. The Press couldn't get to her at Hastings, and Charles's friends were so used to her visiting that her appearance at his side had caused very little comment locally. It was exactly what they expected to happen.
It was, on the whole, a very pleasant life, she told herself that late April morning as she gazed out over the lake and Hoover came chasing across the lawn to greet her with great lollopy licks. If only ... she thought wistfully, her hands protectively over the curve of the baby ... if only Nick hadn't betrayed her.
* * *
Two weeks into filming, and Nick knew he had made a terrible mistake. In over eighteen years of film-making he had never worked in such appalling conditions, and, physically strong though he was, his natural energies soon began to dissipate.
'Lord luv us, Nicholas, what the bleedin 'ell made you come all the way to this God-forsaken hole?' his faithful Lenny asked, in the mock Cockney he often used on American locations to annoy the Yanks. He had actually gone quite white with shock at his first sight of the impenetrable jungle they could see from the boat taking them up the river from the tiny town that was their main base. Coari itself was pleasant enough, built on a cool, silt-free lake, very unlike the river, and ringed with white sand and green jungle. Its streets hummed with life and it made a welcome change from the primitive conditions they endured elsewhere.
'I really can't imagine. I think I had a brainstorm and let Seth get the better of me,' Nick sighed. 'Cheer up, Lenny, it can only get better.' But it didn't.
In fact it got a great deal worse, seemingly every day something else went wrong.
Nick could hardly believe how stoic his small cast were. All English, by his choice, and how wise he had been!
The two lead actors were both products of good English public schools and the stiff upper lip bred in them was very much needed. Americans, he had told Seth firmly after his initial recce, would have been on the first plane home after half a day. Nick had little faith in the resilience of American film actors, cosseted as they were by the major studios and producers.
The jungle was relentlessly unforgiving to the invading film-makers, and consistently showed its worst side.
They were constantly soaked by the endless rain, and eaten alive by the torrents of insects that never seemed to leave them alone, day or night.
Whole crates of equipment were still held up in Brazilian Customs, 'awaiting paperwork.' 'Bribes more like!' Nick grumbled, after yet another fierce argument over a crackling phone in a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish.
Communications were, as he had predicted to Sarah, pretty well impossible, especially with Los Angeles. It could take hours just to get a call to Rio from the depths of the jungle.
'And we've got weeks more of this!' Madeleine told them cheerfully, when Lenny and Bud, the first assistant, were bending his ears yet again over their problems.
Nick swatted at a persistent mosquito and laughed. Every morning the one thing he thanked himself for was finally persuading Madeleine to come on location with him, after she had turned up unexpectedly in LA and looked him up at Jane's suggestion. She had proved to be an absolute godsend. Not just to him but to everyone on the crew.
She was wife, mother, girlfriend and father-confessor to everyone, and all without a sign of preferring one above another. Even Nick was treated in the same easygoing fashion, and it was a complete relief. Sexual hassle added to everything else would have finished them all. Most of the crew were too tired to even think of it, he decided thankfully. He certainly was! Lenny had christened her Florence Nightingale, and she certainly earned the title as they all preferred her to deal with all the cuts and bites that they all fell victim to, rather than the forbidding Portuguese nurse who was the unit first-aider.
Luckily, Madeleine had the same gift for languages that Nick himself had, having been brought up in a Spanish-speaking area, and she was almost as fluent as he was in Portuguese, so she was able to communicate easily with the natives who worked with them in the little village the art directors had built. From them she learnt of the plants they used for healing and was quickly following suit, frequently to amused laughter from a sceptical crew, which soon changed to gratitude when her potions actually worked.
Nick was troubled from fairly early on by a bite that swelled on his left arm and despite all Madeleine's efforts it seemed to remain, making him even more irritable, especially at night. Several times she begged him to let a local healer look at him, but Nick laughed her off. 'No old biddy is going to mutter incantations over me!' he told her firmly.'It's only a bite, Maddy, it'll go down sooner or later. Otherwise I'll wait until we get back to Belem, and see a doctor there. Happy?'
'Stubborn sod!' Madeleine retorted cheerfully. 'Don't blame me if your arm drops off!'
Nick ruffled her cap of dark curls. 'Such a comfort you are, angel! Does that go as far as a beer?' Madeleine laughed back and reached into her ever-present pack. It contained pretty well every convenience.
'Warm, probably,' she warned, and tossed it to him. 'And
the last one till we get back to base - make the most of it.' Nick always seemed to be thirsty these days. He put it down to all the shots he'd had topped up before he came out to the Amazon, but at that moment he frowned. He had never had any effect from shots before, and he reasoned that he should be used to them by now. Working in often remote parts of the world meant that he always kept his injections up to date; they were part of the medical checks insisted on by the film's insurers.
He decided he was making a thing about nothing. They were all feeling under the weather, indeed several members of the crew had already been sent back to Rio with various illnesses. Nick was determined he wouldn't be one of them. Though if he was, he realized one morning, when he felt particularly dreadful, then at least he would get back to the UK, and Sarah, that much quicker.
For a few minutes he was incredibly tempted to try it, until the next crisis arose and he automatically went to deal with it. Like Sarah, he knew he couldn't back out of a deal - too many people depended on him - and he finally shrugged it off.
He missed her desperately, missed her warm, chatty letters and the sound of her voice on the telephone. It seemed weeks since he had received a letter from her, and he cursed the situation he found himself in. His one consolation was the infrequent messages from Seth about the Palm Springs purchase, which was going ahead in his absence under the eagle eyes of Waterston's lawyers. The first thing they would do together, he told himself, was furnish their house, and the thought cheered him through many dreary days of foul weather and wading around in the endless sea of mud.
At night, as with Sarah, the longing was worse. Even if his body was exhausted it was difficult to sleep in the steamy humidity that never let up. Though their mock Indian village had a series of reasonably comfortable bungalows built onto it for the cast and crew to live in, there was certainly no air-conditioned comfort. It did save commuting back to the town every night, however, and with a small but efficient staff imported from LA it was preferable to stay there rather than face the horrible journey. They ate their own food, which was simple but edible, and even had a fairly well-stocked bar to call on. But they had quickly found that the picturesque thatched bungalows leaked like the proverbial sieves, and learned to sleep with buckets or bowls handy to catch the worst of them.