House of Mirrors

by Yvonne Whittal

  “Oh, God…help me!” Liz prayed silently, but nothing happened, Myra kept coming like an avalanche; inevitable, unavoidable, and totally destructive.

  Liz wished she could reach out to throw a protective shield around Grant, but it was too late. He turned for some reason, saw Myra, and went as white as the pillar behind him.

  “Darling!” Myra breathed seductively, subsiding very elegantly on to the curved bench beside Grant, and placing a slender, possessive hand on his arm. “I’ve been watching you for the past hour, but I couldn’t get away until now. You’re looking simply marvellous, Grant, and I believe you’re quite well again.”

  “Liz can vouch for that,” said Grant, staccato-voiced.

  “Liz?” Recognition dawned in those slanted green eyes as Myra acknowledged Liz’s presence at last. “I’ve been trying to place you, but now, of course, I realise who you are. You’re Liz Holden- Stacy’s little sister. Are you visiting here in Johannesburg?”

  “Liz is my wife,” Grant cut in abruptly before Liz could reply.

  “Your wife?” Myra laughed with an incredulity that rankled. “Darling, you must be joking. You couldn’t possibly have married anyone so- so young. Why, it’s almost indecent!”

  Liz opened her mouth, but Grant, beat her to it again with a terse, “Whichever way you would like to look at it, Myra, we’ve been married for more than three months.”

  “Well, congratulations,” Myra smiled derisively, her eyes spitting pure venom at Liz before she turned to Grant with a note of intimacy in her voice. “I shall keep in touch. We have so much to catch up on, don’t we, darling?”

  Myra left their table to return to her friends, and Liz could not help recalling Joe Townsend’s remark. “A marriage licence has never stopped Myra in the past from getting what she wants.” And Myra wanted Grant. It made no difference to her that she had left him in the lurch when he had needed her most. She had had him once, and she was confident that she could have him again.

  A thin film of perspiration stood out on Grant’s forehead, and the hand that held the glass was shaking. He looked like an addict in need of a vital shot in the arm, and Myra was the one who could give it to him. Liz watched him in silence while he made an obvious effort to control himself, and never before had she felt so utterly helpless, and so sick inside with fear. The wine had gone sour, and the celebration had become a farce.

  “Let’s go,” she said stiffly, and Grant nodded in agreement.

  They tried to make conversation on the way home, but they both failed. To Liz it felt as if she was with a stranger who had erected a barrier between them which was impenetrable, and that barrier was Myra.

  Grant poured himself a stiff whisky when they arrived at the house, and he was pouring the second when Liz finally said goodnight and went up to bed. She could not sleep, not with Grant downstairs in the living-room, drinking, or whatever it was he was doing.

  It was long after midnight when at last he entered their bedroom. He undressed himself in the dark, muttering a few curses when he bumped into something, but Liz pretended to be asleep even though she was painfully aware of every movement he made.

  When she could no longer hear him moving about she waited for the familiar weight of his body beside her on the bed, but nothing happened. She turned over on to her back, her eyes searching the moonlit darkness, and she saw him standing silhouetted against the window as if he were staring out into the blackness beyond.

  What was he thinking? Oh, God, he couldn’t still want her after everything they had been to each other these past months! Could he? She asked herself the agonising question.

  She passed a shaking hand over her cold face and slipped quietly out of bed.

  “Grant?” She touched his arm lightly and felt the muscles tense beneath her fingers. “It’s so late. Won’t you come to bed?”

  For a moment he seemed not to hear her, then he stirred and turned towards her, his eyes on her pale face in the filtered moonlight coming in through the window.

  Her hair was dishevelled, and she was unaware of how young and vulnerable she looked standing there before him in her lacy nightdress with her heart throbbing so painfully in her breast. Love you, love you! The words cried out from the depths of her soul, keeping time with the rhythmic beat of her heart, and Grant seemed to come alive to the silent appeal in the hands she held out to him.

  They went to bed without speaking, but when their bodies touched Liz felt him shudder, and he made love to her that night with a strange desperation that kept her awake until dawn with desolation and despair tearing away at her insides.

  Chapter 8

  THAT meeting in the restaurant with Myra Cavendish changed the course of their lives drastically. Grant became withdrawn, and flung himself back into his work as if his life depended on it. He came home late in the evenings, and often stayed out until the early hours of the morning, but what hurt Liz most was when he moved into the room adjoining theirs. He used pressure of work as an excuse for his late hours, and insisted that he did not want to disturb her at night, but Liz knew she would be a fool to believe that. She tried once to discuss the situation with him, but he became so infuriated with her that she was too afraid to mention the subject again. She could not prove that he was seeing Myra, but she imagined he was, and it kept her awake most nights until deep shadows appeared beneath her eyes.

  Grant’s behaviour was not the only thing that troubled Liz at that time. She was beginning to suspect that she was pregnant. It was something neither of them had taken into consideration, and although they had taken a few precautionary measures, there had been the last thing on their minds. She had no idea how Grant felt about having children, but she hoped that, if her suspicions were confirm, it would help considerably towards stabilising their marriage. Perhaps a child was what they needed to help him shake free of this dreadful hold Myra had on him again.

  Another long week passed; a week of wondering, hoping, and praying, but the true gravity of the situation was made clear to her when she looked up from her sewing one afternoon to find that she was no longer alone in the living-room.

  “Myra!” Liz gasped the woman’s name in astonishment.

  “You don’t mind my coming in unannounced, do you?” Green eyes darted about the room and, not giving Liz an opportunity to speak, she added: “I still think of this place as my own.”

  “I’m glad to see that everything is still as I left it,” Myra smiled that cold, humourless smile while she glanced about her once more.

  “Everything is still the same except for the small lounge across the hall which I use as a study.” Their glances clashed in battle. “Why are you here, Myra?”

  “I should have remembered you’re not the type to beat about the bush,” Myra smiled sweetly, but the sweetness was mixed with venom. “Stacy always said you would risk the fires of hell rather than walk around them.”

  “Get to the point.”

  “I want Grant.”

  Liz felt the shock of her words right down into her toes. The sparring was over, and their daggers were drawn. “What makes you think that I’m going to let you have him?”

  “You’ll have no choice.”

  “You’re very sure of yourself?”

  “I’m sure of Grant.” Myra drew blood.

  “You had him once, but when he needed you most you left him in the lurch,” Liz parried.

  “I was in a state of shock after is accident, and I admit quite freely that I behaved like a fool.” Myra raised her beautifully arched eyebrows at Liz’s sceptical expression. “We all make mistakes, darling. I’ve admitted mine, so why don’t you admit that you made a grave mistake when you decided to marry Grant?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, Myra, our marriage was not a mistake.”

  “He doesn’t love you.”

  Liz winced inwardly as Myra drew blood a second time. “I know he doesn’t love me.”

  “Why hold on to him, then?”

  “Grant asked me to m
arry him,” Liz replied evenly. “If he wants his freedom, then he has only to ask for it.”

  “Why make it difficult and awkward for him, and for yourself?” Myra sighed.

  “Why not simply admit defeat and quietly disappear out of his life?”

  “That maybe your solution, but it’s not mine. I don’t walk out, or turn my back on my commitments.” Liz scored a hit. It was two to one, and that flash of anger in Myra’s heavily lashed eyes told her so.

  “Suit yourself,” Myra shrugged lightly, “but don’t say you haven’t been warned.”

  They sat there, mentally circling each other, but both equally determined not to give the other an opening.

  “Was there anything else?” Liz asked coolly.

  “No,” Myra smiled, admiring herself unashamedly in the mirrors. “I’m looking forward, though, to moving in here with Grant.”

  That was a hit below the belt. Myra was fighting dirty as Pamela had warned in her letter, but she was scoring points nevertheless.

  Liz put her sewing aside, and rose to her feet with an unconscious grace and dignity which came to her as naturally as breathing. “You know your way out.”

  “Don’t be nasty, darling,” Myra sneered, uncurling herself form the chair, and overpowering Liz with her exotic perfume. “You surely didn’t think yourself capable of holding him, did you?”

  Her disparaging glance swept Liz up and down, but instead of anger Liz felt a strange calmness rising within her. “You’re beautiful, Myra, no one can dispute that fact, but your beauty is limited only to the outside, and some day soon Grant is going to see you as you really are - a selfish, heartless shell with nothing to commend you except a body that pleases, and in time you’ll lose that as well.”

  Liz scored a triple, and now they were even. Most people possessed an Achilles" heel, that tender spot where they were most vulnerable, and Myra’s was her beauty. She was obsessed with it, and Liz had always known that she was intensely afraid of losing it. Liz despised herself for striking out in such a despicable way, but Myra had laid down the rules, and Liz had followed.

  “Grant will never escape me, my dear. I have only to snap my fingers and he’ll come running,” Myra hissed, and her face was distorted with fury. “Just wait, and you’ll see!”

  It was only when the outer door slammed behind Myra’s departing figure that Liz felt her calmness desert her. Her legs started to shake, then her entire body, and she sat down heavily in her chair to stare with sightless eyes at the shaggy carpet beneath her feet.

  Grant would never leave her for someone like Myra. Surely their marriage meant something to him? Liz tried to convince herself that, whatever the cause of the problem between Grant and herself, it could be ironed out in time, but that did not diminish the fact that Myra was so frighteningly sure of herself. “I have only to snap my fingers and he’ll come running.” That was precisely how sure Myra was of herself.

  Liz snapped her fingers, absently imitating Myra’s furious actions, and quite suddenly she was laughing a little hysterically, but she clamped down on it swiftly. She tried to convince herself that she had nothing to fear, that Myra was merely desperate in her attempt to win Grant back, and she succeeded partially. There was, after all, something else which needed her immediate attention.

  Two days later Liz drove herself into the city to keep her appointment that afternoon with the doctor. The little green Mini which Grant had bought her shortly after his release from the hospital manoeuvred easily in the busy Johannesburg streets, and parking was no problem when she arrived at the medical centre.

  Liz felt nervous when she found herself ushered into the doctor’s rooms half an hour later, but he was a kindly gentleman in his late fifties, and he fortunately did not associate her with Grant when she gave him her name. The examination lasted only a few minutes and, when she faced the doctor once again across the wide expanse of his desk, he smiled at her.

  “Your suspicions were correct,” he said. “I would say you’re at least eight weeks pregnant.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked with growing excitement.

  “I’m positive.” His smile broadened. “You may go home, Mrs. Battersby, and tell your husband that he’s going to become a father in the not too distant future.”

  Liz tightened her fingers on the strap of her handbag to steady the trembling of her hands. “Thank you, I’ll do that.”

  “Come and see me again in a month’s time,” he said, accompanying her to the door, and Liz nodded without speaking.

  She felt too shaky to venture into the traffic immediately. There was a tea-room across the street, and she fastened her coat buttons to keep out the cold while she waited for the traffic lights to change. A few minutes later she was sitting at a table with a hot cup of tea in front of her while she tried to analyse her feelings. She felt excited and afraid simultaneously, but the knowledge that she was pregnant filler her mostly with awe. There was a new life growing inside her - a life which Grant had as much a share in as she, and suddenly she could not wait to tell him. She drank her tea quickly, almost scalding her mouth in the process, and then she was hurrying out of the tea-room and across the street to where her Mini was parked. Everything else was temporarily forgotten, shifted to the recesses of her mind to make way for this new and exciting development, and Liz made up her mind that, when she arrived at the house, she would contact Grant somehow and beg him, if necessary, to be home in time for dinner that evening. She wanted to tell him, she wanted to share her secret with him before…! No, she would not think of it now. Later perhaps, but not now.

  Grant’s sleek white Jaguar was parked in the sweeping, circular driveway when Liz arrived at the house, and she stared at it in surprise. Was it a good or a bad omen? She did not stop to decide, and hurried into the house as quickly as she could.

  She found him in the living-room, slumped uncharacteristically in a chair with a cigarette dangling between his lips.

  “Grant, I’m so glad you’re home early. I have—” She stopped abruptly, pausing also in her happy flight across the room when he rose from his chair and turned to face her. Their eyes met, and the atmosphere was suddenly crackling with an awful tension. “What is it? What’s wrong?” she heard herself asking without actually being conscious that she had spoken.

  He gestured towards the cabinet against the wall. “Would you like a drink?”

  Her eyes shifted to the clock on the mantelshelf. “Four o’clock in the afternoon is a bit early for me.”

  “You won’t mind if I have one?”

  She shook her head slowly and watched him pour himself a whisky. “What’s on your mind?”

  He did not answer her at once and simply stood staring at the glass in his hand, then he swallowed down its contents in one gulp, and turned to her. “It was never my intention to hurt you, Liz, and you must believe that, but there’s no nice way of saying what I have to.”

  “It’s Myra Cavendish, isn’t it?” she was saying in a voice that was surprisingly calm considering that her insides were shaking so uncontrollably.

  “Yes, it is.”

  Shock swept through her like an icy blast of wind across the highveld. She had been warned, but the reality was still a tremendous blow.

  “I should have seen it coming since that night we met her in the restaurant,” she whispered, her eyes searching his face, then she controlled herself and asked bluntly, “Are you having an affair?”

  “Credit me with a sense of decency, Liz,” he replied angrily. “We’ve met, and we’ve talked, that’s all.”

  “Did she tell you that she wanted me to simply fade out of your life to make it easier for both of you?”

  His glance sharpened. “She came to see you?”

  “A few days ago.” Liz drew a careful steadying breath and explained. “At the time I thought she was merely trying to frighten me, but I should have known she was serious.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said, and he looked it too, she though
t charitably, but the room was beginning to sway about her. “Are you all right?” he asked quickly, stretching out a hand to steady her and lower her into a chair.

  “Yes…yes, I’m …fine…I think.” I must not faint. Oh, God, I must not faint, she thought anxiously, and fortunately the room righted itself again within a few seconds. “Did she explain her reasons for walking out on you after the accident?”

  “She did.”

  “And you believed her?” she demanded cynically, and Grant’s brow darkened with anger.

  “I had no reason not to believe her.”

  “And how did you explain the reason for our marriage?” she asked, unable to hide the bitterness welling up inside her. “Did you tell her that I was only too eager to help you pass the time until she decided to come back to you?”

  “For God’s sake, Liz, I-“

  “That’s what our marriage has amounted to, hasn’t it?” she interrupted bitingly.

  “You must remember that I asked you to marry me at a time when I was at my lowest ebb, mentally and physically,” said Grant, and Liz wondered curiously why she felt no pain, only an icy numbness where her heart ought to be.

  “What you’re trying to say is that you knew Myra wouldn’t have you under those circumstances and I was better than nothing at all.”

  “Dammit, Liz, it wasn’t like that at all!” he growled, going faintly white about the mouth.

  “Do you want a divorce?”

  His mouth tightened, but his eyes had a glazed look that troubled her. “I don’t know yet what I want. All I know at the moment is that I need to be free to sort myself out.”

  “Then that settles it, doesn’t it?” Liz said bitterly, getting to her feet and surprised that her legs continued to hold her in an upright position.