White Rose of Winter

by Anne Mather

  Julie moved her head disbelievingly. ‘I don’t think anything any more,’ she exclaimed. ‘Go on! You haven’t given me the excuse why you have to go.’

  ‘Damn you, it’s not an excuse,’ snapped Robert. ‘It’s a reason! Look, I’ll try to make it clearer for you. As I’ve said, I did the ground work for this project. It was my design, my baby. When everything seemed to be going smoothly, Moran took over. But for some inexplicable reason, there’s been an explosion at the dam, and Moran’s been killed. How the hell could I send someone out there to investigate knowing full well it was my responsibility to do so?’

  Julie linked and unliked her fingers. ‘But, Robert, this is no ordinary time. Heavens, everything’s arranged for next week. We can’t just call it off.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting we call it off,’ said Robert, in a dangerously hostile tone. ‘All I want is for you to agree to a postponement.’

  ‘A postponement!’ Julie chewed her lips nervously. ‘And how do you suppose people will take that?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Exactly what I say.’ She shook her head. ‘Can’t you see? Are you so blind, too? The fact that you’re leaving on this assignment will be proof to them that we’re through – finished! That the postponement is simply the overture to the cancellation!’

  ‘Stop talking nonsense!’ Robert was impatient, his own nerves strung up at this unexpected intrusion into his plans. ‘It needn’t be a long postponement, a month – maybe two.’

  ‘Two months!’ Julie turned away. ‘Let someone else go.’

  ‘I can’t.’ He was adamant. ‘Julie, I’ve tried to explain. If you don’t believe me, I don’t know what else I can say.’

  Julie bent her head. ‘How can I believe you? Does your mother know about this?’

  ‘Yes, she knows.’

  ‘I expect she was jubilant,’ murmured Julie bitterly.

  ‘After all, it gives her a few more weeks to persuade you you’re making the biggest mistake of your life, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Julie!’ Robert’s tone was agonized, and he put his hands on her shoulders trying to turn her towards him, but she shrugged him off, moving out of his reach.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ she cried.

  Robert caught his breath angrily. ‘Julie, you’re being ridiculous! You’re behaving as though I’m trying to back out of the wedding.’

  ‘And aren’t you?’

  ‘No!’ The word was a fierce repudiation, but Julie was too miserable to think coherently.

  ‘I want to go home,’ she said dully.

  ‘Julie!’ He was exasperated. ‘You can’t go like this. We haven’t finished talking about it. There are arrangements to be made about sending out postponement notices—’

  ‘I want to go home!’ Julie repeated, turning on him. ‘You make what arrangements you like. It’s nothing to do with me, anyway. Your mother arranged it all.’

  Robert raked a hand through his hair. ‘I won’t let you go like this,’ he groaned. ‘Julie, be sensible! I love you. Doesn’t that mean anything any more?’

  ‘Apparently not,’ said Julie scornfully.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If you loved me, you couldn’t do this to me – to us!’ Julie stared appealing at him. ‘Robert, please, let someone else go. Peters, perhaps. Or – or Lionel Grant.’

  ‘No.’ Robert was adamant. ‘Julie, I’ve got to go. Accept it!’

  ‘Never!’ Julie was becoming emotional, and although she knew she might regret such an ultimatum in the cold light of morning, right now all she could think of was that she was not going to be able to walk down the aisle of St. Margaret’s on Saturday wearing the gorgeous lace gown Robert’s mother had had made for her, carrying a bouquet of white roses, or depart on that exotic honeymoon in the Caribbean. It was childish, but compared to Robert she was a child – then.

  Robert looked about him rather desperately, as though seeking for words to substantiate his claim. ‘Julie, you can’t do this to me,’ he said, rather huskily. ‘I – well – God, I need you!’

  ‘Do you?’ she taunted him. ‘You’d never know it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He glared at her.

  Julie shook her head. ‘Oh, nothing.’ She was already beginning to realize that Robert was almost at the end of his tether, too. She walked to the door. ‘I want to go home. Will you take me, or do I have to walk to the railway station and take a train?’

  Robert stood regarding her with brooding animosity. ‘You’re not leaving yet,’ he announced grimly. ‘As I said earlier, there are arrangements to be made.’

  ‘Not so far as I’m concerned,’ retorted Julie, reaching for her coat and sliding her arms into it.

  Robert moved then, his anger erupting into action. He caught her by her upper arms, wrenching her body close up against his, so that she could feel every hard muscle straining against hers. Then he bent his head and fastened his mouth to hers in a kiss that was as brutal as it was unexpected. And yet in spite of that, the urgent response it aroused in Julie’s body could not be denied, and her lips parted weakly.

  When he eventually lifted his head she did not notice the strain in his face, only the coldness in his eyes. ‘Well?’ he demanded, ‘now tell me you won’t marry me!’

  Julie stared back at him. She ached to admit that he was right, that she would wait for him for as long as he wanted her to, but the utter contempt in his voice destroyed these admissions at birth. Instead, she struggled impotently with him, trying to free herself, trying to draw up her fists and hammer that contempt from his lean dark face.

  ‘No, I won’t marry you!’ she exclaimed fiercely. ‘I – I hate you!’

  Robert’s eyes darkened and he put a rough hand behind her head and brought her mouth to his again, his kiss more savage and brutal than the last, conveying his anger and contempt at his own need of her.

  But Julie didn’t sense that immediately. To her it was simply a case of his taking out his anger on her, and although the continued insistence of his lovemaking was seductive, she tried desperately to fight back.

  It was a losing battle. Robert was so much stronger than she was for one thing, and he was an expert when it came to getting what he wanted from a woman. He had never used that expertise on Julie before, respecting her innocence, prepared to wait until she was his wife and free to love him without restraint. But now he had been driven beyond the limits of his endurance. He had never kissed her so deeply, so intimately, sliding the coat from her shoulders to fall unresistingly in a heap at her feet, caressing her so that a flame started in her veins and ran to the extremities of her body. It was like drowning, she thought, in one of her more coherent moments, and while an escape to the surface might be safer there was something infinitely desirable about giving in and allowing the tide of emotion to sweep over her …

  Now, Julie climbed out of the bath and began to dry herself. Recalling that evening six years ago had made her restless and she could not relax any longer.

  She was beginning to realize that she had been as much to blame for what had happened as Robert. But at the time, she had blamed it all on him and had refused to listen when he had attempted to apologize. Apologies were little consolation for the enormity of his crime, and she had behaved without reason, running from the house as though the devil himself was at her heels.

  There had been pitifully few days left for Robert to make amends, days when he should have been making his own arrangements for departure. Lucy Pemberton herself had even gone to Julie in an effort to avert the disastrous effect Julie’s attitude was having on her son, but Julie wouldn’t listen to her. She didn’t want to hear about postponements, about wedding presents that she felt sure would never now be hers, and Lucy had left her in high dudgeon, blaming the whole sorry affair on her.

  Eventually, Robert himself came to her flat. She had left her job at the office the week previously and she had known he would have to come in search of her if he wanted to persuade her
that anything was different from what she believed. She still clung to the idea that he might give up this plan to go to Venezuela, but his words when she opened the door to him disabused her of that supposition.

  He had been brief and almost formal in his approach, only the lines of fatigue around his eyes and beside his mouth bearing witness to his own mental state. He had suggested that they got married immediately, in a register office. There was nothing to stop them, and once she had had the necessary inoculations and injections she could follow him out to Venezuela.

  But to Julie that had been the last straw. She had seen it as his attempt to make amends for the fact that he had made love to her, and she became convinced in her own mind that without that guilt on his conscience he would never have made such a suggestion. Why hadn’t he asked her to marry him the night he told her of the proposed assignment? Why had he waited until now?

  The row that followed was brief, too, but explosive, and after he had gone she had known that she had destroyed everything between them by her own stubborn obstinacy.

  She had thought that that would be the end of it. She had read about Robert’s departure for Venezuela in the paper and the brief comment that his wedding had had to be postponed because of his business commitments, but she had known that had been only a face-saver so far as Lucy Pemberton was concerned. She thought she would never see either Robert or his family again. But she had been wrong.

  In the first few weeks following Robert’s departure she had managed to find another secretarial post in order to support herself, avoiding any coffee bars or restaurants where she might conceivably run into any of the crowd from the Pemberton building. She couldn’t face them; not yet. Life assumed a kind of routine and she blunted the pain of her separation from Robert by spending all her evenings at concerts or at the cinema so that when she arrived back at the flat she was too exhausted to do anything but go to bed.

  Surprisingly, she slept quite well, and initially she put this down to nervous exhaustion. But later, as the weeks went by, the realization of what was happening to her became apparent. Even then, she wouldn’t accept it, convincing herself that the events of the past few weeks had simply upset her normal metabolism. It wasn’t until she began to feel nauseated when she got up in the morning and could no longer face the smell of strong coffee that she had to acknowledge that she was pregnant.

  She panicked, naturally. She had no parents, no one to whom she could turn. She had heard of societies that helped people in her condition, but she dreaded contacting one of them. She dreaded having to supply some stranger with all the details and watch them looking at her with unconcealed pity.

  No, rather she should face Robert with this knowledge and allow him to pay for the birth and possible adoption. He might even want to keep the child himself. She would not consider the possibility that he might want her too.

  So she wrote to Lucy Pemberton asking her if she would send her Robert’s address in Venezuela. Lucy did not reply, but several days later Michael Pemberton visited her. He was home on leave from his ship, he told her, and as his mother was not well he had taken it upon himself to come and give her Robert’s address. It wasn’t until later that Julie learned that Lucy had forbidden him to contact her again.

  Julie had spoken rather uncomfortably to Robert’s brother, unable to relax in case he should suspect the motives behind her desiring to know Robert’s whereabouts. And yet Michael had been quite kind, and he had tried to put her at her ease.

  She wrote to Robert at once, not telling him of her condition, merely asking him whether it would be possible for him to fly to England and see her. She wanted to see his face when he received the news. It was not something one could baldly state in a letter which might fall into the wrong hands.

  Robert’s reply, however, was scarcely civil. He told her there was no possibility of his being able to return to England at this time, and that he expected to be away at least a further three months.

  Julie was distrait. She didn’t know where to turn next. And it was in this humiliatingly tearful state that she had opened the door one evening a few days after receiving Robert’s letter and found Michael Pemberton again on the threshold.

  If he had been bewildered by her obvious distress, he had contained his curiosity, and after she had admitted him he had made her sit down and calm herself while he made some tea. His compassion had been too much for Julie. With gentle encouragement she had poured out the whole story and he had listened intently to what she had to say. When she showed him Robert’s letter, he suggested that she should write again and tell his brother the truth. He was convinced, he said, that had Robert suspected anything like this he would never have been so cold, so dismissive.

  But Julie was adamant on that score. It was obvious, she said, that Robert was no longer interested in what happened to her, and if she were to write and tell him of her condition he would only come back out of decency, and not because he really wanted her.

  Michael argued with her, but finally agreed that Robert should not hear any of this from him.

  In the days that followed he was a frequent visitor at Julie’s flat. Julie didn’t mind. It gave her something else to think about, although she was sure his mother would not approve of this alliance. When he eventually proposed marriage, however, she was astounded. She had never dreamt that this might be in his mind, for although she had become fond of him, he was simply Robert’s brother, not a personality in his own right.

  Michael, though, proved to be a determined advocate of his cause. He had explained that through his connection with the Admiralty he had been offered a post in Rhatoon on the west coast of Malaya, and he was only hesitating about accepting it because he would be the only unmarried man among a group of married people. He explained the advantages and disadvantages of living out there, but his most persuasive theme was that Julie would be able to have the baby without anyone, least of all Robert, discovering that it was not Michael’s child. The appointment was likely to be a lengthy one and probably by the time they returned to England Robert would be married himself and Julie would have forgotten this disastrous and unhappy affair. It was a great temptation, a wonderful opportunity to escape, not only from the consequences of her condition but also from the chance of Robert finding out that she had had a child and then demanding why he had not been informed.

  From the distance of years Julie could see that like all her actions it had been motivated by an unreasoning sense of panic, a mindless cowardly desire to run and hide, to bury her head in the sand, and pretend that everything could be made right again. Maybe Michael had been partially to blame. He had provided her with this escape and once he saw she was weakening he had pressed his advantage at every opportunity until at least she gave in.

  They were married a few days later in a register office with only two of Michael’s friends as witnesses. Lucy Pemberton had taken another of her unwell attacks, but they both knew that in reality she had refused to come to the wedding. She couldn’t understand why Michael should be foolish enough as to want to marry a woman of Julie’s calibre, and she saw Julie’s behaviour as a deliberate attempt to thwart the Pemberton family.

  But they left for Rhatoon within a month of the wedding and out there, away from the influence of the Pembertons, there was no one to view their marriage as anything less than a normal one. Julie had the baby in the spring and no one could have been more delighted with their daughter than Michael. It was not until Emma was three months old that he made any attempt to consummate their relationship, and by then Julie was so grateful to him for his generosity and understanding that it was almost easy to be kind to him; and if she never found with Michael the ecstasy she had known with Robert, she refused to put it down to anything more than the differences in their temperaments.

  Now Julie viewed her reflection in the bathroom mirror without pleasure. Maybe she had made a terrible mistake all those years ago in believing that Robert thought more about his work than about her. Maybe he h
ad had no choice in the matter of the explosion at Guaba. Certainly she had been fooling herself all those months and years in Rhatoon if she had ever succeeded in convincing herself that what she had felt for Robert had died. She had merely succeeded in burying it beneath a layer of bitterness, and who could have guessed, certainly not she, that Michael would die so tragically and thrust her back into the mêlée of the emotions he aroused in her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE following morning Sandra came into the kitchen soon after eleven looking furious.

  ‘Something will have to be done about that child!’ she declared. ‘She’s just upset my bottle of ink all over the textbook I was using.’

  ‘Oh, heavens, I’m sorry!’ Julie was apologetic. ‘I’ll speak to her at once.’

  ‘Don’t bother!’ Sandra’s lips curled. ‘I’ve punished her myself.’

  Mrs. Hudson looked up from her baking at this and Julie felt her nerves tighten. ‘I see,’ she said carefully. ‘And what form did this punishment take?’

  ‘I’ve cut down the swing.’

  ‘You’ve done what?’ Julie was horrified. She rushed to the window and looked out; the severed ropes on the cherry tree looked bleak and ominous in the grey light.

  ‘It was the only way,’ went on Sandra, self-righteously. ‘Would you rather I’d spanked her?’

  Julie shook her head slowly. ‘No, I suppose not. But the swing – it was her favourite occupation.’

  ‘Precisely. There was little point in depriving her of something she didn’t value.’

  Mrs. Hudson’s mouth turned down at the comers, expressing her disapproval, but Julie was trying to be fair. After all, if Emma had overturned the bottle of ink deliberately then she did indeed deserve to be punished. Even so …

  ‘Er – where is she now, then?’ Julie asked, endeavouring to appear calm.

  Sandra shrugged. ‘In her room, I imagine. I’ve dismissed her for the rest of the morning.’ She glanced round. ‘Is there any coffee available? I’d like to take a cup up to my room. I have some letters to write and I might as well be doing them as wasting my time trying to educate a child who plainly doesn’t wish to be educated!’