Magnus remained as still as stone, though now she could see a faint movement as the wind plucked at his sweatshirt. The tumbling boom of the waves covered the sound of her approach. A curling white crest lipped the edge of the jutting rock promontory and fine, cool spray spattered her face. Coming to a halt beside him, she saw that Magnus’s hair was beaded with tiny droplets, and the shoulders of his sweatshirt were wet.
She touched his hair, feeling the dampness on her fingers, and knelt at his side, letting her arm slide about his shoulders. She felt his breathing momentarily stop, and then begin again, the muscles under her hand stiffening.
Quietly she said, “He was treating me for months. I wasn’t coping as well as I pretended, and I knew if I didn’t get help I’d crack up. I looked up counsellors in the yellow pages. Patrick was in private practice then, and quite expensive. That’s where the money from my account went, in fees. But I thought it was worthwhile. It helped, being able to talk to someone.”
Magnus had raised his head, but he didn’t look at her. Another wave hit the rock face and showered them with spray. He took no notice. “Why not me?” he asked, his voice oddly muffled. “Couldn’t you have talked to me?”
“I didn’t want to add to your burdens,” she explained. “You were worried sick about Danella, and relying on me to look after the rest of the family. I didn’t want you to know that I was a broken reed. Then, when I realised I was pregnant—I knew it was the last thing you needed at the time. Another responsibility to add to those you already had. I didn’t know how I was going to tell you I’d been so careless. I knew you’d be upset, even angry.”
“If I’d known it was our child—” He took a deep breath. “Did you really think I would reject it—reject you?“
“I was in such a state I didn’t know what to think. I just couldn’t seem to find the words to discuss it with you. Then Patrick said he was going away to do post-graduate study overseas, and I felt my one prop had been taken from me. I hadn’t realised how fragile my control was at that stage, how much I relied on Patrick to keep me functioning normally. I panicked and...oh, Magnus, I’m sorry I was so weak, when you needed me to be strong.”
“You’re sorry!” he said thickly, and with a convulsive movement he turned to her, his arms going about her as though he couldn’t help himself, his cheek rasping against hers, damp and salty, before he buried his face on her shoulder. “Oh God, Jade! How can I even ask you to forgive me?”
Kneeling on the hard, cool rock, she cradled him in her arms. “It’s all right, Magnus,” she murmured, her lips against his wet, sea-scented hair. “You don’t have to ask.”
He gave a great, shuddering sigh. “I thought—”
“I know,” Jade soothed. “I know. What else were you to think? Even I had to believe it in the end. Although in my heart I could never accept that I’d been unfaithful to you.”
He raised his head, facing her in the gloom. “I should never have accepted it, either. I should have had more faith in you.”
Jade shook her head. “It’s all right,” she insisted. “You’d only met me a few months before we were married, and what chance did we have to get to know each other, really? With your commitments to your family and your work—”
“I should have made time for you,” he said. “I should have at least realised that I was asking too much of you. What a selfish, blind brute I was.”
“No. Just overworked and overcommitted, and with a strong sense of responsibility.”
“To everyone but you. And you should have come first! I wanted you to, desperately. I kept promising myself that soon I’d make time to concentrate on us and our relationship. Everything kept getting in the way. My mother, my sister, the boys—my obligation to the farms. I felt I had to preserve what I could for Laurence—it had always been understood that he was to run them, because I didn’t want to make farming my career but he was dead keen. There never was time for us, you and me. And because it was what I wanted most in the world—to take you away somewhere and be alone with you—I never considered how unfair I was being to you in not doing it.”
“How could you?” Jade asked. “You couldn’t turn your back on your family when they needed you most.”
“You needed me, too. And I let you down—so badly.” He drew another heavy, shaking breath. “Maybe deep down I knew that your breakdown was my fault. And I was too much of a coward to face it. It was too monstrous a thought to admit, that I had done that to you entirely on my own. Blaming the mysterious Patrick was the easy way out. And that way, I could even lay some of the blame on you.” His mouth twisted. “How did I dare to say I’d forgiven you, when the real guilt was all mine?”
“Neither of us was entirely to blame. It was a combination of circumstances. You were too busy to see what was happening to me, and perhaps you didn’t want to see it—”
“I did see,” he confessed. “But I never guessed how bad it was, and I kept telling myself that it was temporary, and lashing myself to make more money so that I could afford to pull you out of the situation I’d got us in. I should have realised that it was urgent, that there wasn’t time to wait. If I’d known how bad it was, I’d have let the farms go, found a rest-home for my mother, left Danella to sort herself out—”
“I couldn’t have allowed you to sacrifice your whole family for me! You did your best—I knew that.”
“My best,” he groaned. “When I was driving you to a complete breakdown?”
She lifted a hand to his cheek, and wiped some of the moisture from it. “I did that myself. Please, Magnus, stop beating yourself. I love you—till death us do part.”
“Jade,” he said. His eyes suddenly closed tightly, his face contorted in a grimace of anguish. He said her name again, and blindly reached for her, his fingers trembling as they touched her face, her hair, drew her close until her lips touched his. He whispered her name again, and then his mouth closed almost reverently over hers, and he made an inarticulate sound in his throat as she opened her lips and passionately returned his kiss.
His hands and his lips were cold, and she tasted the salt of the sea on his mouth. She moved hers over it, warming it, hooked her arms about his neck, and felt his hands slide to her waist, her hips, then up again, to cradle her head between his palms. He withdrew his mouth and looked down at her. “I don’t deserve you, my love,” he said soberly. “On my knees, I promise to love and cherish and trust you with my life, through all the days we have left.”
Jade turned her head aside and kissed his hand. “We’re both on our knees,” she pointed out, as a wave slapped onto the rock and spat white foam over them. “And we should be moving, before we get swept away.”
He laughed, and pulled her to her feet. “I have been,” he said. “You swept me away years ago when you first walked into my office, and I’ve been in over my head ever since.”
“So it wasn’t just for my practical skills that you married me?” she asked as they picked their way across the slippery, uneven surface.
Magnus stopped to look at her. “You never believed that!”
“I did for a while. At least, I wondered—your mother thought that was the reason.”
“My mother thinks a lot of things,” he said shortly, “and she’s wrong about most of them. I married you because I was scared stiff that I’d lose you to someone else while I was sorting out my family’s problems.”
“And when you learned about Patrick you thought it had happened anyway?”
“It seemed an ironic twist of fate, yes.”
He let her go and jumped to the sand, helping her after him. She leapt lightly down, landing with one hand held in his, the other on his shoulder.
She smiled up at him. Their bodies were almost touching. “Remember when this was almost the only place we could be alone?” she asked him softly. They stood in a tiny half cove, the dry, pale sand near the cliff above overshadowed by a huge old pohutukawa dipping its curved branches low.
“When you used
to get nervous about making love in our bedroom in case someone overheard us?” He gave a sharp sigh. “You put up with an awful lot, didn’t you?”
Jade nuzzled her head into his shoulder. “The boys are home again,” she reminded him. Their bedroom was on the same floor.
“So they are,” Magnus said slowly. “You mean you’re likely to go coy on me again?”
Jade raised her head. “I was not coy!“
“You were,” he said tenderly, tugging gently at her hair. “But never down here. Here, you felt safe, didn’t you? In the dark, by the sea.”
A smile lit her eyes. “I feel very safe here.”
“Oh, Jade.” He put his arms about her waist, loosely, and touched his forehead to hers. “I didn’t dare ask—expect...”
“So,” she murmured, “are you going to make me ask?”
He drew her nearer. “No,” he said. “No.” And he gathered her to him, his lips meeting hers with desire, and need, and reckless passion.
Minutes later they were together on the cool, cushioning sand in the shadow of the tree, and the leaves moved against the night, making tiny whispering sounds that echoed their incoherent, loving whispers of endearment. Their final cries of fulfilment were lost amid the thunder of the sea roiling about the rocks and falling on the sand.
Afterwards they lay in each other’s arms until the night breeze freshened and intruded on their haven, and then they dressed and wandered back along the beach with their arms about each other, pausing now and then to kiss, and murmur words that hardly made sense, and kiss again.
As they stood looking up at the house, Magnus said, “We’re going to start looking for our own house, very soon. You must hate this place.”
“No.” She shook her head. “It’s beautiful, and we were happy sometimes.”
His hold on her tightened. “We’ll come back for visits,” he said, “holidays with our children. It’s a family place.”
Jade drew a breath. “You’ve guessed?”
“Guessed?” He looked down at her quickly. “Jade! You mean that you’re—”
“Pregnant. Yes, I think so. In a week or two I’ll know for sure.” Hesitantly, she said, “Are you pleased?”
“Pleased? I’m—oh, Jade!” He pulled her fully into his arms again. “No one in the entire history of the world has ever been so pleased as I am at this moment.”
She laughed, and hugged him in return. “I hoped you would be, but I wasn’t sure.”
“Oh, my darling. I have so much to make up to you.” His voice shook, and he kissed her with great tenderness.
“You have the rest of our lives to do it in,” she promised, stroking back his hair from his forehead. “And I have the rest of our lives to prove to you that you’re the only man I will ever love. Starting now.”
* * * * *
ISBN: 978-1-4592-8795-2
An Interrupted Marriage
Copyright © 1994 by Daphne Clair de Jong
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