by Anne Weale
It wasn’t the only clash between her working and private life. That winter they happened with increasing frequency and sometimes they led to quarrels. But these always ended in passionate reconciliations.
When Project X was finally unveiled as Cyberscout, the first really user-friendly way of accessing the Internet, its success was immediate. Launch presentations at international computer shows demanded Van’s presence since his was the driving force behind what the computer trade press unanimously described as a massive breakthrough which would bring more people online than any previous development in this area.
The night he came back to Paris, bushed but triumphant, Van asked Anny to marry him. She couldn’t believe he had postponed his proposal until he was certain he was going to be extremely rich.
‘How could you think it would matter to me? I would marry you if you were...an out-of-work road sweeper,’ she told him, laughing.
Tired as he was, he made love to her. They fell asleep in each other’s arms.
The next day it became apparent that getting married wasn’t as straightforward as it had seemed the night before.
Van wanted to re-open the palazzo and start living there. He also wanted Anny to live there with him, all the time, not just whenever she was able to get away.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THEY were still in vehement disagreement when they flew south for a weekend, Van to see the house, Anny to spend time with Bart.
One afternoon while she was sunbathing on deck, Bart went ashore and walked up to the house to find Van.
‘You and Anny are having a difference of opinion, I hear. She’s told me her side of it. What’s yours?’
Van said, ‘Haven’t you already heard my side of it from her?’
‘Women have a way of slanting things to suit themselves. So do men, come to that...politicians are experts at it. You tell me how you see the situation. Then I’ll tell you what I think.’
From the loggia where they were standing they could see Sea Dreams at anchor and Anny lying on her stomach on a folding sun-bed, reading a book while her slim legs and bare back toasted.
Van said, ‘I know you’ve never been happy about the way things stand now...our living together in Paris. I don’t like it either. I love Anny. I want to marry her. I have a house and the funds to restore it and make it a fine home. We have everything going for us. The only obstacle is Anny’s career. She speaks perfect French. I’m sure she could get a job on one of the papers within easy reach of Orengo. But she doesn’t want that. Anything less than a national is too pedestrian for her.’
He paused, waiting to see if Bart was going to comment. When he didn’t, Van went on, ‘To be honest, I don’t want a career-wife. A lot of guys can’t afford to support a family. They need two people’s input to finance the lifestyle they want. But that’s not our situation. Restoring Orengo will be a long-term project needing close supervision. I think it would be more useful for Anny to take charge of that. She has all the right qualifications. She loves the place. She’s artistic. She’ll enjoy the research involved. She has a flair for getting along with people. At the end of the day she’ll have something to show for her efforts. You know how it is with journalism : today’s front page story is tomorrow’s garbage-wrapping.’
‘Journalism’s in her blood,’ Bart reminded him. ‘Her great-grandfather was the editor of one of the best small-town papers in Britain, her grandfather was on The Times, her father trained as a print reporter and then transferred to television.’
He paused. ‘We’re all programmed by our genes. I reckon the reason I was drawn to the sea was because one of my grandfathers was a sea captain. Computers are relatively new but, if you were to look back through your family history, you’d find something to account for the way your mind works and the ambitions that drive you.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Van agreed. ‘But most people are also programmed to mate and have children. I don’t think Anny is the kind to be ruled by her head rather than her heart. I can’t see her as a dedicated journalist with no time for personal relationships. Journalism has changed a lot since her grandfather’s time. It’s become pretty sleazy. Can you see Anny pushing and shoving her way to the front of the tabloid mob when they swarm round their latest victim? I can’t.’
‘The press has always had its squalid side. Even the senior professions, medicine and the law, aren’t sleaze-free,’ Bart said dryly. ‘You can’t decide Anny’s future for her, Van. She has to work it out for herself. I understand how you feel. But the days when women were content to go wherever their man led are long gone, old son. Even thirty years ago, the one I wanted wasn’t willing to break her ties with her family and come adventuring with me.’
‘She may regret it now.’
‘I shouldn’t think so. It would have been a tough life for her...for any woman.’
‘The life I’m offering Anny isn’t a tough one. Very soon I’ll be able to give her everything she’s ever wanted.’
‘What she wants at the moment is freedom and independence. You want to tie her down. I think you should try to be patient and let her find out for herself what’s really important in life.’
‘How long is that going to take?’ was Van’s grimfaced comment.
‘Who knows? But it’s no use going to the altar if she wants one thing and you want another. That’s the route to the divorce court.’
Anny guessed that the two men had had what Bart called a confab but she didn’t ask either of them what had been said.
To her relief, on the way back to Paris, Van stopped putting pressure on her. In the months that followed he didn’t say any more about living at Orengo but nor did he mention marriage. It seemed that he had decided to let things go on as they were.
In March she was on an assignment in Lyons, making notes for an insight into the lives of the wives and daughters of one of the great silk manufacturing dynasties, when it struck her that her period was late.
Her cycle had never been erratic. After two days she began to feel alarmed. By the third day she was panicky. In theory there were all kinds of reasons why her insides might have seized up, but none of them seemed at all likely, given that she had no health problems and was not under any more stress than most people in her profession. She was forced to conclude that, somehow, something had gone wrong and she was pregnant.
Instead of starting her article on the train back to Paris, she sat staring out of the window, trying to come to terms with the fact that, in a few months’ time, she might be starting to bulge.
She wanted a baby one day...but not in the foreseeable future. Babies came later, much later, after she had made her name as a journalist.
Van had timed a trip to the States to coincide with her absence and wasn’t due back till late that night. She prowled the apartment, waiting for him to return. She hadn’t gone out to the airport to meet him because he would see immediately that something was wrong and she didn’t want to tell him what it was until they were alone together.
Having checked with the airport’s enquiry desk that his flight was on time, she switched on the TV and checked all the channels, hoping to find a programme to hold her attention for another hour. By ironic coincidence, one of the characters in a long-running soap was agonising over what to do about an unwanted baby.
Fran and Julie had been addicted to one of the soaps, but Anny had never shared their interest. Now she found herself identifying with the anxieties of the girl called Isabelle, except that she was pregnant by a married man who would ditch her as soon as he found out.
Annoyingly, Isabelle’s dilemma was left unresolved as the episode ended with the usual dramatic cliffhanger. It was followed by a quiz show. Anny switched channels and forced herself to listen to a current affairs discussion, but her thoughts kept wandering off.
At last she heard Van’s key in the lock. She had switched off the set and was already on her feet when he opened the door. Dumping his overnight bag on the chair beside it, he
closed the door and held out his arms to her.
‘How was Lyons?’
‘OK. How was your trip?’
Usually, when they had been apart for more than a few hours, she flew into his arms, her face alight with the joy of having him back. This time she walked, forcing herself to smile. Had there been any good news, she would have told him immediately. This news was better kept back until he’d had time to relax.
They kissed and he held her close. ‘I missed you. What time did you get back?’
‘About five. Are you hungry?’
‘I ate on the plane. A shower’s what I need...followed by a drink.’
He went off to unpack.
She had already rehearsed a dozen different ways to broach the matter on her mind. Opening a bottle of wine and a tin of olives, she wondered for the umpteenth time how he would react.
When Van joined her in the living room, he was wearing a white terry bathrobe and the pair of light tan deck shoes he wore around the house. The fluffy texture of the terry contrasted with the burnished sheen of the tanned skin showing in the V of the robe. He wasn’t covered with thick hair like most of the dark-haired men to be seen on Mediterranean beaches. For her taste, he had exactly the right amount of body hair. But tonight the last thing on her mind was making love.
She poured him a glass of wine, placing a dish of olives beside it. But when he would have pulled her onto his lap, she deflected his arm and shook her head.
‘I’d rather sit over here. There’s something we have to discuss.’
‘That sounds serious. What have you done? Run up a massive debt?’ He was smiling, expecting to hear something he would regard as trivial.
‘I—I think I’m pregnant.’
Van’s smile faded. There was a long pause before he said, ‘How late are you?’
‘Four days...but I’ve never been late before. Some people’s cycles are never the same two months running. Mine are...always have been.’
‘There’s a first time for everything,’ said Van. ‘People who drink too much, or take chances, do have slip-ups. We’re not like that. There’s no way you can be pregnant. Wait a few days. It’ll sort itself out.’
Although he spoke in the plural, it was he, by his own choice, who had taken the responsibility for that aspect of their life together. Early on, when they had discussed it, he had said that he didn’t want her disturbing her system with chemicals.
At the time she had been touched by his protective concern for her. From what she had heard and read, his attitude wasn’t the norm. But then Van was an unusual man who thought about everything more deeply and farsightedly than the average person. She had trusted his judgement and his reliability. She knew that some of her colleagues wouldn’t approve of a woman surrendering such an important responsibility to the man in her life. But they didn’t know Van like she did...or had thought she did.
‘If it doesn’t sort itself out... what then?’ she said, in a low voice.
‘There is no “what then”. You are definitely not pregnant, angel. If you were, there would be only one option. We’d get married and live happily ever after.’
His expression, as he quoted the last line of so many classic fairy tales, was that mixture of tenderness and amusement which normally she found irresistible. But tonight it was exasperating that he could smile and speak lightly of a contingency which, to her, was a disaster.
‘How can you be so positive? No method is totally foolproof...never one hundred per cent safe.’
‘It’s usually the human factor which accounts for the tiny margin of unreliability,’ Van answered dryly.
His unworried attitude riled her. ‘And you of course are superhuman.’
She regretted the sarcastic comment the moment it was uttered, knowing it to be unfair. He was not a big-headed person who saw himself as flawless. Considering the brilliance of his mind, he was remarkably modest. She had heard him listening quietly to opinions she knew he thought asinine, but he never wounded other people’s egos by demolishing their views in public. It had been unjust to accuse him of regarding himself as infallible.
Although she acknowledged this inwardly, she couldn’t bring herself to apologise.
Ignoring her sarcasm, Van said quietly, ‘You’re tired and you’ve been bottling this up. Worries always seem worse when there’s no one to share them. Tell me about the people you met in Lyons. Were they interesting?’
Usually she enjoyed talking over her assignments with him. Sometimes his comments added a dimension to her own observations. But tonight she wasn’t in the mood to discuss anything but the feeling that her life was being swept off course like a boat which had lost its rudder.
‘How can you sit there so calmly when a few months from now I may have to resign?’ she exclaimed, her eyes stormy.
‘That’s nonsense, Anny,’ he said calmly. ‘There’s no way you can be pregnant. Calm down and try to relax. It may be tension which is causing the problem. When people are stressed, they get all kinds of strange symptoms. If it hasn’t come right in a few days, you should have a check-up.’
She knew what he said made sense, but it was easy for him to stay calm. It wasn’t his life and his career plan which would be disrupted if something had gone wrong. One of the editorial secretaries was pregnant and for the past few weeks had been at the morning sickness stage. Anny had been in the ladies’ washroom when Yvette had come rushing in, to emerge from a cubicle a few minutes later looking pale and groggy.
It didn’t take her long to recover and carry on as normal. But Yvette’s pregnancy was planned and she didn’t intend to return after her maternity leave. It would mean making economies, but she planned to have two children close together and concentrate on them until the second reached school age.
It sounded like a sensible plan, but everything about Yvette’s life was different from Anny’s. She was eight years older and she wasn’t climbing a career ladder. Like millions of married women, she worked because, although her husband had a good job, his income was swallowed by their mortgage and other essential expenses. Yvette’s pay had covered the extras; holidays abroad, patio furniture, equipment for the coming baby.
To Anny, becoming a journalist was her basic reason for being. It came before all the other things life had to offer. She saw her twenties as her time for establishing herself professionally, not for being encumbered by a baby.
Van finished his glass of wine and poured another. He said, ‘Let’s go to bed. I’ve missed you.’
For the first time ever the suggestion repelled her. She lost her temper. ‘I think you did this on purpose. I don’t think it was a mistake. I think you did it deliberately.’
The desire she had seen in his eyes the moment before her outburst went out like a switched-off light. The planes of his face seemed to harden. He said quietly, ‘With what object?’
She said hotly, ‘The reason is perfectly obvious. You just said it yourself...there’ll be only one option. With a baby on the way I shall have to marry you. I shall have to live at Orengo.’
Van rose from his chair. The muscles at his jaw were knotted under the taut brown skin. She had never seen him look so angry. But his voice remained under control. ‘I’ll sleep in the study.’
Her eyes still stormy, she watched him go to the door of the flat’s second bedroom used mainly for work. But it did have a fold-up bed.
Without saying goodnight, he went in and closed the door. He hadn’t denied her charge.
She spent a miserable night. As soon as she woke up next morning she knew Van had been right. She wasn’t pregnant. She ought to have known it. Her bad temper last night, her impetuous accusation had been typical PMT. She was always touchy for twenty-four hours beforehand and her panic had made it worse.
When she went to tell him she was sorry, he wasn’t there. He must have gone out very early. He was in when she came home that night and he listened to what she had to say and seemed to accept her apology. But this time they couldn’t
make peace in the usual way and the next time they made love it was on her initiative. Afterwards, she felt it hadn’t completely healed the rift between them. In a moment of reckless anger, she had damaged their relationship and the only way to put it right was to give him what he most wanted. But she couldn’t do that.
Two months later when, at least on the surface, their relationship was back to normal, Anny was head-hunted by the woman editor of one of England’s national newspapers. It was an opportunity she hadn’t expected so soon and she had to take it.
Van’s reaction was, ‘If you go to London, I shan’t be going with you.’
‘But it was you who told me “Distance is dead”. If you can run things from Orengo, why can’t you run them from London?’
It was rare for him to swear and when he did it had more impact than other people’s casual expletives. He said, ‘Because I don’t bloody well want to. You’ve always known what Orengo means to me. If this flaming job is more important than I am, take it! You go your way and I’ll go mine.’
‘That’s putting a gun to my head,’ she flared back at him.
‘You’ve got a gun to my head. If I want you, I’ve got to live your way. Well, I don’t like your way, Anny. I want out of city life. I already have a house in a beautiful place and I want to live there...preferably with you but, if you won’t come, without you.’
‘Go ahead!’ she retorted. ‘I’m not ready to give up everything I’ve worked for to be your... your handmaiden.’
‘I’m not sure you ever will be.’ His voice rasped with anger. ‘You think you can have it all. You can’t. Not if you want a man who isn’t a wimp.’
Six weeks after their separation, she saw him once more, at her uncle’s funeral. Bart’s body was found in the sea but an autopsy showed he had died of a massive stroke, probably while climbing aboard from the dinghy.
The funeral took place at the Nice crematorium. Afterwards Van helped Anny to sail Sea Dreams out to sea and scatter the ashes. He was kind and supportive in practical ways during the time she was there. But she felt he had written her off and they could never recapture what they had once shared. She arranged for the boat to be sold, taking a few mementoes of her uncle back to London with her.