Wife Without Kisses

by Violet Winspear

  His brown cheeks creased as he leant against the dressing-table and watched her adjust the jaunty little hat upon her head. She looked charming, he thought. A charming child, playing at being grown up!

  “Do you like yourself now, Rea?” he enquired.

  She smiled. “I don’t think I am myself,” she said. “I feel as though—as though I’ve been taken over, like someone in an H. G. Wells story. I think I shall wake up presently and find myself back on Hastings pier, watching the lights dancing on the water like a cascade of diamonds.”

  “Will this help to strengthen the spell or break it?” Burke withdrew his hand from his pocket and came to her. He took hold of her right hand and fitted on to her wrist a delightful little lozenge-shaped watch, attached to a wisp of a gold strap. “Like it?” he murmured.

  “Oh, Burke! Oh, I can’t take it!” She stared at the little watch. “You’ve given me so much already—too much!” “Tokens of very sincere appreciation, believe me, Rea.” He held up her hand, admiring the delicate partnership of slender, blue-veined wrist and tiny gold watch. “You did more than come to King’s Beeches to take up an invidious position, you took little Peter into your heart. And that love of yours for Peter has secured his position at King’s Beeches far more effectively than my individual affection for him would have done.” Burke smiled. “Are you aware that Grandfather is most impressed by your devotion to

  your young son?”

  “Has he—has he said so,” Rea’s eyes were wide with amazement.

  Burke, still smiling, hugged her gently. “Yes, my dear, he has actually said so. Now hurry up and get into your best coat, we’re going out to the lushest restaurant I can find.”

  And it was lush!—decorated in silver and turquoise, with chandeliers that were like glistening fairy castles set in a domed roof of translucent turquoise glass, with a band whose music was like smooth cream, Rea thought, and a waiter who had the dignity of a bishop.

  He reverently brought and placed their apricot jam omelettes and Rea gazed after him in undisguised delight. “He’s lovely!” she said to Burke. “He reminds me of Tolliver.”

  “The estimable Tolliver, my child, wouldn’t appreciate being likened to a waiter,” Burke retorted. “Tolliver has been called the most perfect butler in Somerset.”

  “He’s very fond of Peter, you know.” Rea delicately licked delicious apricot jam from the side of her mouth. “He takes him out in the pram. And do you know,” her eyes laughed across the table into Burke’s, “he still looks as dignified as Cromwell. I like him. He doesn’t make me feel in the least an—an intruder.”

  “Well, you’re not an intruder, you’re the mistress of King’s Beeches.”

  “No!” She shook her head in quick negation, her smile darting out of sight and a sudden wash of embarrassed pink in her cheeks. She hated to be called— that! Intruder was the right word; Burke couldn’t gild it into “mistress” with a pleasant smile and a wardrobe of expensive clothes. “Burke, don’t let us pretend when we’re alone,” she begged.

  “I’m not pretending, you silly little thing!” His eyes laughed at her as he dabbed at his lips with a table napkin. “I know you’ve got a secret yen to see me landed with Iris Mallory, but Iris eats her men—skin, bones—feet!”

  “Oh—you!” Rea had to laugh.

  “Did you pick out a perfectly fabulous dress to wear at Iris’s party?” Burke asked.

  She nodded. “But I’m going to keep it shut away until the night of the party. I’m not even going to show it to

  you.”

  “How unkind! I’ve a good mind not to give you a second glass of champagne.”

  He squeezed her hand—and then lost all laughter as he caught sight of someone beyond her left shoulder. The woman was rapidly bearing down upon them, swathed in a cerise dress that did battle with the rouge upon her cheeks, her eyes almost bolting from her head. Burke was wincing long before she exclaimed, at Rea’s elbow: “Well, I never did! If it isn’t little Rea Glyn!” Rea’s head jerked round towards the speaker and her soft mouth made an O of unutterable dismay as she found herself staring straight into the hard blue eyes of Laura Damien—eyes that were distended to their fullest extent, avid with curiosity.

  Then Burke drawled: “Won’t you join my wife and me in a glass of wine, Mrs. Damien?” He released Rea’s hand, rose to his feet and politely pulled out a chair for Laura and he and she stared at one another as she took the proffered chair. She was pink and hot and bursting with questions; he was cool and sardonic and fully prepared, Rea could see, to enjoy Laura's questions.

  “So it was you!” she burst out.

  “It was I.” He poured champagne, then lounged back in his chair, sipping the shimmering liquid with imperturbable appreciation.

  “You might have told me!” Laura flung across the table at Rea. “It’s hardly believable! How long have you been married?”

  “We knew one another exactly a fortnight, Burke drawled. “Romantic, eh?”

  Laura gave a harsh laugh. “You’re a cool one, Burke,” she said. “It was you, I suppose, who told Rea not to tell me. Why the secrecy?”

  “Because I like cheese with my apple pie.”

  “You knew I’d ask questions,” Laura shot back at him. “You knew I’d be very interested to know why you — you of all people,” the finger she shook at him was waggish, “should want to marry my little Rea. After all, my dear, neither of us can pretend that she sparkles, exactly. A good, sweet child - but—” She laughed at him over the rim of her wine glass and her laugh plainly said: “But we both know that a man of the world - your kind of world—wants more than that.”

  “A good, sweet child,” Burke echoed. He grinned wickedly at Laura. “Aren’t I the lucky one?”

  “She told me she was going into the country to look after a little boy.” Laura gave a rather coarse guffaw. “Did you tell her to say that?”

  “As a matter of fact, I didn’t,” he replied. “How clever of her!”

  “Oh I’ll admit, she’s been clever,” Laura retorted significantly. She took another gulp at her champagne, then she said brashly: “She’s a damn good typist, but I can’t see her ladying it over that regiment of servants you must have at King’s Beeches. D’you know,” Laura’s laugher was huskily malicious, “she used to fall over her own tongue giving orders to a hotel bell-boy.”

  Her bold blue eyes swung to Rea. “Didn’t you, my dear?” “D-did I?” Rea flushed to her fringe, for how well that malicious remark of Laura’s described the kind of person she had been—still was, despite the expensive dress she wore tonight.

  Shy and stupid, Laura’s remark said, and Rea slowly lowered her eyes to the champagne glass in her hand, her joy in her smart little dress, this glamorous restaurant, the charming nonsense Burke had been talking only a matter of minutes ago dying out of her, leaving her chilled and depressed. She was just a dressed-up puppet —and Laura Damien seemed to know it.

  “Did I?” she said again. Then she lifted her head and her eyes fully confronted Laura’s. On a rising note of defiance, she added: “Wasn’t I stupid? But then I am rather stupid. I still ‘stupidly blush,’ as you used to call it.” “Ooh, temper!” Laura laughed, opening her eyes up wide.

  But Burke didn’t laugh, though Laura half looked at him, as though expecting him to.

  All at once he seemed to lose his amusement at the situation. Abruptly he jerked back his chair and rose to his feet. “Sorry to break up the party, Mrs. Damien,” he said, “but Rea and I have tickets for Covent Garden. We’ll be late if we don’t get a move on.” He strode round the table and almost lifted Rea out of her chair. Brusquely he helped her on with her coat.

  “So you still go to the ballet?” Laura drawled, also rising and negligently shaking out the rustling skirt of her cerise dress. “It was always a weakness of yours, wasn’t it, my dear? I’ve never forgotten the utterly lovely face of that little ballet-dancer you used to be so friendly with. What became of her? Did she
retire from dancing?”

  Rea, listening, drew in her breath, for Burke’s hands about her arms had become bands of iron, torturing her flesh, though he seemed entirely unaware of the fact. He held her against his breast, staring over her head at Laura Damien. “She died,” he said, curtly.

  “Why, the poor child!” Laura’s eyes opened wide, their painted lashes standing out stiffly all round those staring blue globes. “So young, so talented—so lovely! Oh, you poor boy, what a tragic loss for you—you could never, never replace her!” Her eyes left Burke and raked Rea’s face. “You had to see that little girl, Rea, to appreciate the absolute loveliness of her. She was so happy and sweet, too! Always laughing, she was. So alive, so full of sparkle.” She glanced back at Burke, having got this thrust in at Rea, who seemed to shrink into even smaller and paler proportions against Burke as she, too, remembered the enchanting face of that dead girl. “Burke,” Laura demanded, “Whatever did she die of? I mean, my dear, she was so young.” “She was twenty-seven,” he returned. “She probably overworked. The life of a ballet-dancer isn’t an easy one, you know.”

  “Of course not.” Laura held a square of cerise chiffon to her chin, her glance archly sympathetic as it travelled Burke’s dark, unsmiling face and finally settled on Rea, held like a small shield against his broad chest. “Do you know, I still can’t quite take it in. You and little Rea— married!” she burst out.

  “If I had my marriage lines on me, Mrs. Damien, I’d exhibit them just to ease your mind,” Burke retuned, with deliberate rudeness.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean—” she laughed, waving the square of chiffon about in the air, actually a trifle embarrassed. “I meant, dear boy, that it’s such a surprising match, you and little Rea. She’s such a shy, retiring child.” Then, as Burke refrained from answering, merely returning her stare of bold curiosity with a blank impassiveness, she gave another laugh and glanced across the room, to where somebody waved impatiently from a table close to the circular dais where the band played. “I must go,” she said. “My friends across the way are getting impatient. It has been fun, meeting again.”

  “If you say so, Mrs. Damien,” Burke drawled. Laura laughed as her glance settled again on Rea. “You’ll have to invite me down to King’s Beeches, my dear,” she insinuated, a coy quirk to her large, painted mouth. “I’d adore to see the place.”

  “But, Mrs. Damien,” Burke said, lifting an eyebrow at her, “we’re still in the throes of our honeymoon. We’d be very dull company for you. We hold hands all day long.” “Do you?—how sweet!” Laura’s smile, however, wasn’t very sweet as she watched the sudden little flags of colour flying on the delicate thrusting of Rea’s cheekbones. She might well blush, Laura thought. Deep little chit!

  “Oh, well,” Laura said, “invite me later, dear boy. We’ll talk about the old days.”

  “The old days?” Burke stared at her and once again his hands closed bruisingly upon Rea’s slender arms. “They’re part of a book I don’t read any more, Mrs. Damien.”

  “Because of that poor lovely girl!” Laura tut-tutted sympathetically. “I see—oh, I do see! The things you have don’t really compensate—do they?” Once again she waved her handkerchief about. Then she exclaimed: “Oh dear, my friends are making frantic signals again —that’s my publisher, sitting beside the long-necked creature in green! I really must go, my dears! So lovely, meeting again!”

  She was gone with the words, threading her large, cerise-enshrouded figure between the tables, leaving behind her a wave of silence and perfume. Burke slowly, slowly relaxed his hold upon Rea’s arms. “So hellish, meeting again!” he amended.

  Rea lay staring into the darkness. She had, she discovered, grown so used to the majestic and feathery comfort of her four-poster at King’s Beeches, that this stream-lined hotel bed seemed strangely small and comfortless in comparison. She turned first this way, then that, telling herself it was the bed that was keeping her awake. But it wasn’t the bed alone.

  Her mind was dancing with faces and thoughts and the

  remembrance of things said throughout this strange, long day. The luxurious scent of Madame Baum’s dress shop still seemed to linger in her nostrils; the rasping surprise of Laura Damien’s voice to linger in her ears; the fluttering, glittering birds of the Covent Garden stage to go on leaping and spinning before her eyes.

  Oh, she couldn’t stand it, this restless floating upon a wave of scent and colour and voices! She sat up, reaching out a hand and snapping on the bedside lamp. If only she had a book—anything to quiet her mind, strung to such a discordant pitch, like an over-wound violin. She glanced round the elegant hotel bedroom, but there were no books, no magazines. She sighed and clasped her arms about her updrawn knees.

  How awful it had been, running into Laura Damien again! It had spoiled the whole evening. Burke had turned so moody and taciturn, and throughout the ballet Rea had seemed to see Dani Larchmont. Every whirling bird was Dani. Every vivid face upon that stage belonged to her. Every slender leg and beckoning arm . . .

  Burke had made no comment on the ballet as they had left, and his taciturn manner had all too successfully reawakened a tongue-tied shyness in Rea. She had sat small and mouse-quiet in the taxi that bore them back to their hotel, the smoke of Burke’s cigarette drifting to her, stinging her constricted throat. She felt, suddenly, that her presence, in the taxi and in his life, was resented by him—and why not! If Laura Damien’s reappearance into their lives had reawakened his memories of Dani Larchmont, then he must resent her presence. Her good, sweet, childish presence!

  Rea’s small teeth restlessly nibbled her bottom lip; nibbled and nibbled, till the lip burned. Poor Burke, saying to her, Rea: “Does one ever stop paying for one’s mistakes?” Wanting Dani—wanting and wanting —now it was too late. Rea’s arms tightened about her knees. Somehow she would have liked to have brought him a little comfort—

  Then her head jerked up and she stared at her door, for it had opened and Burke stood tall in the wide-thrown aperture of it. “I woke up—and saw your light under the door.” He tied the silk cord of his dressing-gown and crossed the room to her. “Are you all right?”

  “I couldn’t sleep.” She hesitated to give him a smile, he looked so dark, so almost grim, in the dark silk of his dressing-gown. “I’m sorry my light woke you.”

  “No,” he waved her apology away, “it wasn’t your light. I was restless before I fell asleep.”

  He sat down on the side of her bed, a tidying hand over his sleep-ruffled hair. “Why can’t you sleep?” he asked.

  “Oh,” she gave a little shrug, “I--I’m missing Peter. I always bath him for Moira, you know, and I keep wondering if he’s missed me. He looks so adorable, straight out of his bath.” Her face grew wistful as she thought of the warm, wriggling, shrimp-pink baby upon her towel-draped lap, his blue eyes sparkling up at her as she played “this little piggy went to market” with his toes.

  With a motion that was curiously lost and seeking, Rea laid her face against her knees. “Is Peter at all like his mother?” she murmured.

  Burke shook his head. “No. He has my brother Phil’s nose and mouth, and luckily for me, those Ryeland eyes.” “Her eyes were dark, weren’t they — dark as a gipsy’s?”

  “Yes, but how did you know?” A sudden frown drew down Burke’s eyebrows as he watched Rea’s face, turned sideways to him upon her knees.

  “I’ve seen her portrait. While I was out walking — that afternoon it rained and you took me home on Rebel—I met Mr. Larchmont and he invited me into his farmhouse to meet Mrs. Larchmont. I saw the portrait in her room.” Rea’s eyes met Burke’s and they smiled gently. “I can quite understand why you love her as you do.”

  “Because you’ve seen her portrait and think her beautiful?” he returned curtly.

  “Yes.” Rea nodded. “She must have been so full of life. I could almost hear her laughter.”

  “Yes—she laughed a lot.” Abruptly he rose from the bed and be
gan to prowl about the room, idly lifting Rea’s small black gloves and dropping them back on the dressing-table, flicking at the pink fringe of the bedside lamp. “Rea, my grandfather mustn’t ever learn that Peter is half a Larchmont. He dislikes the family intensely. Dani, I’m afraid, was another of his many counts against myself.” Burke shrugged. “He thought I wanted to marry her.”

  “Didn’t you?” Rea spoke gently.

  “I never wanted to marry anyone! That was the trouble—the beginning and the end of it—if we’ve seen the end of it!” He regarded Rea with moody eyes. “I’ve always taken, Rea. Always taken. Being born a Ryeland placed too many advantages in my lap at too early an age; they made me selfish! I took and wasn’t prepared to give back, as Phil was. I wanted freedom and scope and the world to toss like a shining ball—and I tossed it. I wanted the laughter and the gaiety of a girl like Dani, but once again I wasn’t prepared to give back. Let her amuse me! Let her dance to the tunes I piped! Lord,” he drew a deep, harsh breath, “when I look back —when I think of my own arrogance! Dani would be alive now if she had never known me!”

  “Oh, no!” Rea shook her head in quick protestation, sitting up straight in her bed. “You mustn’t believe that, Burke. It isn’t true.”

  “You’re a fatalist, eh?” He looked cynical. “You believe that a Higher Authority writes finis to our earthly adventure, eh?”

  Her fingers plucked at the sheets upon her bed. “I— think I believe that.”

  “Because it softens the blow, Rea!” he retorted. “Because it makes things less terrible, less bleak, to be able to say to oneself: ‘This person I’m fond of has died because his, or her, allotted moment to die has come.’ Well, I can’t think like that, Rea. I can’t say it.”

  “Then your heart will never stop aching, Burke. Your heart will always wear its bruise.”

  “I know.” He gave a harsh laugh. “It’s aching now, my heart.” Abruptly he came to the side of her bed and stood staring down at her. “How young you look,” he said.