Deception and Desire

by Janet Tanner

  Van stubbed out his cigar. He wanted to be sick. His senses were numbed a little by shock, but he knew that when it began to wear off there would be layer upon layer of pain. Yet at the same time, in spite of his horror and revulsion, he knew he still wanted Dinah, even more, if that were possible, than he had before. He loved her, needed her with a desperation he had never expected to experience. He needed her as a man, with his heart and with his body. And he also needed her as the inspiration for everything he hoped to achieve professionally. The combination was compelling; he knew there was no point in fighting against it, no point weighing odds or considering anything but the demands of fate. She was his destiny, whether he liked it or not, and he was hers. They had been meant for each other, flaws and all – useless to do anything but try to make the best of it.

  Van wound down the windows of the Jag and took a few deep breaths of fresh air. It was scented with the sweetness of summer, with cow parsley and hot, dry grass. He knew, as he smelled that particular combination, that it would ever after remind him of this moment.

  Leaving the window down he started the engine. Then he turned the car back the way he had come.

  Dinah was upstairs, in the little front bedroom that Mary was allowing her to use.

  She had been feeling dreadfully tired and drained the last few days, and she had taken to going to her room and lying down for half an hour, supposedly to read. But she couldn’t concentrate on reading, she couldn’t concentrate on anything. The words blurred in front of her eyes and her thoughts churned until she thought she was going mad.

  What was she going to do? Mary was quite right, she had to make plans and it wasn’t fair to expect Mary to make them for her – she had her own life to get on with. Perhaps, Dinah thought, she had been wrong to impose on Mary at all, but she hadn’t known what else to do. She had had to get away from Van and there had been nowhere else to go, no one to turn to. And somehow she hadn’t been able to face striking out alone again as she had done when she left college. Then she had been worried, but positive. Now she felt frightened and panicky and very, very lost.

  And this awful tiredness didn’t help.

  Did everyone feel like this? Dinah wondered. If so, how did women who had other children to cope with manage? But perhaps it was just her, perhaps there was something wrong. She still hadn’t seen a doctor to tell her otherwise. A tiny nugget of hope flared at the back of her mind. Perhaps she was going to lose the baby. That would solve everything. She would be free and everything would go back to being as it had been before.

  Except of course that it wouldn’t. Nothing could ever be the same again.

  Tears filled Dinah’s eyes. If only she had met Van before any of this happened! That was ridiculous, of course. If she hadn’t become pregnant she would never have met him at all – she would still be at college. And it was no use wasting energy thinking like that. She had to pull herself together, face the doctor and the social workers, decide where to have the baby, where she was going to live afterwards and how she was going to support them both. But she simply did not know where to begin and lacked the will to try.

  Dinah got up from the bed and crossed to the window, sitting on the floor with her elbows resting on the sill, staring out at the hot, dusty August afternoon. Her stomach felt heavy and uncomfortable; strange when she thought how well she had managed to conceal it until now – since she had been at Mary’s it seemed to have increased in size overnight, but perhaps it was just that she was not making the effort any more.

  She heard a car turn into the street and looked towards it listlessly. A Jag – like Van’s. The pain in her heart was sharp and insistent, just above the place where she sometimes felt the flutter that she knew was the baby.

  The car came to a stop outside the house. Dinah’s breath caught in her throat, the first stirring of realisation affecting her physically long before her mind had registered the truth. The door was opening, a man was getting out. Van! Dear God it wasn’t just a car like Van’s – it was Van! She leapt to her feet in a flurry. He mustn’t see her like this – she couldn’t bear it! This horrible cotton shift dress straining over her bulge, her hair – oh God, just look at her hair, what a mess! In fact, did she want to see him at all? Should she hide, lock the door, pretend she was asleep, anything, anything, until he went away again?

  The panic rushed up at her, she felt it mounting in her in a hot flood tide, but her hands were icy cold, her legs shaking, weak and useless.

  Dinah thought: I’ve got to sit down! But suddenly the bed looked a dreadfully long way away. She took a step towards it. The room swam around her. Another step, but it was like walking in water. Her legs buckled beneath her and she sank, quite gracefully, to the floor.

  She could hear Mary’s voice calling to her – ‘Dinah! Dinah!’ – but it sounded a very long way off. Then there was another voice, his voice, and she somehow knew that the hand holding hers belonged to him. Her eyelids fluttered, the mists cleared a little. She opened her eyes fully and he was there, the face she loved close to hers. Oh Van, Van …

  Mary was holding a glass to her lips. Brandy. The smell of it made Dinah feel a little sick.

  ‘No …’ She pushed the glass away.

  ‘Have some water,’ Van said.

  It was luke warm, from the carafe beside her bed which she kept there because she often woke in the night and needed a drink and which she had forgotten to empty this morning. But it moistened her lips and revived her a little, though she still leaned back heavily against his arm.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked muzzily.

  He wiped a trickle of water from her chin with his finger.

  ‘I’ve come to take you home,’ he said.

  They were married by special licence three weeks later in a registry office ceremony, because it created less fuss and in any case Dinah could not face a place of worship. Her grandfather, who was her legal guardian since she was not yet twenty-one, refused his permission, so they had to apply to the courts to reverse his decision and then he refused to attend the ceremony. Only Van’s parents and Mary, Bob and little Patrick were there to see them make their vows. Dinah looked utterly beautiful in a twenties-style dress of cream silk that skimmed her thickening figure, and though she was still pale her skin had the incandescence of happiness.

  Van’s parents were less happy. They liked Dinah well enough, but a pregnant twenty-year-old machinist was hardly the bride they would have chosen for their son. Christian Senior had had a few choice words with Van about the whole affair, particularly since he assumed they were going to have to live in the family home, for the time being at least. As a result Van found a suitable house to rent within easy reach of the factory whilst negotiations went on for a permanent home. On the day, however, they put their very real doubts to one side and managed to smile for the wedding group photographs. In fact, Van’s mother, looking at Dinah’s shining face, wondered if perhaps she had been wrong to worry. The girl was beautiful and sweet and Van looked like a man who had everything he could wish for. Kissing her new daughter-in-law on the cheek, she prayed that he would continue to feel that way.

  Dinah was eight months pregnant when Van knew for certain that he could never accept another man’s baby as his own.

  When he had returned to Mary’s house that day in August nothing had mattered to him but having Dinah back with him, and when he had seen her lying on the floor of the cramped little bedroom he had known that whatever the circumstances he wanted only to marry her, take her home and look after her. The child she was expecting seemed unreal, not even a consideration, and in the excitement of arranging the wedding and finding somewhere for them to live he had scarcely given it a second thought. But as she became more obviously pregnant his revulsion began to return, just a slight twinge at first, then growing day by day until it became an obsession.

  Had Van been an introspective man he might have realised that he had not given himself time to adjust to the situation as it was in
reality before making his decision to marry Dinah with all it entailed. But Van was not introspective any more than he was cautious. He acted swiftly and sometimes rashly and he had little time for the faint of heart or the fence-sitter. Van the entrepreneur, the man of action, was curiously lacking in imagination; he acted on instinct, sometimes blundering blindly after what he wanted with no thought for the consequences. This impetuous side of his nature often brought spectacular success, but equally it occasionally brought disaster. As the time for Dinah’s baby to be born drew closer Van knew without a doubt that this was one of the latter occasions. The sight of her swollen body was anathema to him. He did not think he would have liked it very much even if it had been his baby she was carrying; as it was it was much worse, a constant reminder that there had been someone else.

  Dinah had tried to tell him once about the way it had been but he had retorted, rather harshly, that he did not want to know. It was true, he did not, but it ate away at him just the same. He became irritated by her bulk, by her seeming inability to be comfortable in a chair, in the car, in bed, and by her constant tiredness. He no longer wanted to take her in his arms and feel that monstrously swollen belly pressed against him. He could not bear to see her naked. He thought of how she had insisted on making love in the dark on that sweet stolen holiday and how he had planned to show her how to enjoy seeing as well as touching – what irony! Now it was he who wanted to make very sure that her body was under wraps. Once he had come into the bedroom and caught her in the act of putting on her nightdress, and the sight of her swollen breasts and distended stomach had seemed to him grotesque contrasted with her still slim and shapely legs.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Dinah!’ he had snapped. ‘Do you have to?’

  He had seen the hurt flare in her eyes but it had not moved him. He was too concerned with his own feelings. That night he slept in his dressing room. From that day on Dinah had been careful to dress and undress without a moment’s nakedness, in his presence at least. But even her modesty was irritating to him.

  He began working longer and longer hours, but there was little satisfaction at work either. His father was taking an entrenched attitude over the footwear he and Dinah had designed – he had agreed to produce a few pairs of the walking boots, but positively refused even to consider the sandals.

  ‘They are right outside our line,’ he said. ‘ It’s not the way I want to go.’

  Had he been feeling less truculent Van might have considered that getting the walking boots into production was at least fifty per cent success for his scheme and been satisfied to leave it at that for the time being. As it was he saw only that his father was again frustrating him.

  ‘We have to diversify and the sandals are an excellent way of doing that. They won’t even cost much to make since they use up oddments.’

  ‘They will also use up the time of men who are better employed doing what they know. And what about the soles? They can’t be cut from scraps. I don’t want to do it, Christian.’

  ‘Father, we need a second string if we are ever to grow.’

  ‘Grow? Who wants to grow? This is a good business we have here, just the right size.’

  ‘Tin-pot.’

  ‘I beg your pardon? If that is how you feel about it, Christian, I suggest you go away and start your own business. I won’t be told how to run mine by anyone, least of all my own son, who has benefited from it all his life.’

  Van sighed. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I should think so too! You have hurt me, Christian. One day perhaps your son will do the same and then you will know how I feel. It is not nice, being criticised and told what to do by one’s own son.’

  Van winced. ‘ I shall never have a son,’ he wanted to say. ‘It is not my child Dinah is carrying.’ He did not; the question had never been raised at home and he knew that his parents assumed that the doctors had been wrong when they had said he was infertile. They thought, quite naturally, that the baby was his, and he had been too proud to correct the mistaken assumption. But his father’s comment reminded him cruelly that the child was not his and that he did not want it. He could not bear the thought of having to see it every day of his life, could not bear to share his home – and his Dinah – with this unwanted intruder. He would be an appalling father, he knew, directing all his resentment at the cuckoo in the nest. He did not want to have to care for some other man’s child and he was certainly not going to hand his life’s work on to him. He hated the baby now and he would hate it even more when it was there, demanding love and attention and money. Perhaps in the end he would even hate Dinah for foisting it on to him. The fact that he had married her knowing about the baby made no difference. He could not – would not – take the charade any further than he had to.

  Van thought about it and he came to a decision. When Van came to a decision it was, as far as he was concerned, a fait accompli.

  ‘I can’t do it!’ Dinah said. She was white with shock and horror. ‘Van – you can’t be serious! I can’t give my baby up for adoption!’

  ‘And I can’t keep it,’ Van said flatly. ‘ I’ve tried to accept it and I can’t. I’m sorry, but there it is. At least I’m being honest. Better to face up to it now than to ruin all our lives.’

  ‘It wouldn’t ruin mine – it’s my baby!’

  ‘But not mine. And it would certainly ruin our marriage.’

  ‘Van, I couldn’t! I couldn’t!’

  ‘Dinah.’ Van adopted a reasoning tone. ‘ You must know how I feel. I should think it’s been plain enough these last weeks and it is going to get worse. What sort of a life would your child have, knowing that his father hated him? Now if he was adopted he would have two loving parents who really wanted him. Surely you can see the sense of that?’

  ‘I can see that you’ve gone mad! I won’t talk about this any more!’

  ‘Dinah …’

  ‘Be quiet! Be quiet!’ Tears were streaming down her face. Love for her stirred him, then he glanced down at the bulge of her stomach and hardened his heart.

  ‘All right, Dinah, if that’s the way you want it. But please realise I am in deadly earnest about this. I will not have this child. I will not bring him up as my own. If you insist on keeping him you can consider our marriage over.’

  She took a step back as if he had hit her, hands flying to her mouth.

  ‘Van …’

  ‘I mean it. The choice is yours. Me – or the baby. You can’t have both.’

  ‘I thought you loved me!’

  ‘I do love you.’ His voice softened. ‘I love you very much. We can have a wonderful life together, you and I. We are right together, two halves of a whole – and not only in marriage but in business too. We proved that, working on the new designs together. You have the talent and the vision, I have the business acumen and the wherewithal. We could start something new together, branch out and build a company of our own that would be exactly the way we wanted it. And we’d have each other. Wouldn’t that be better than you fending for the baby all alone? What sort of a life would that be for you or the baby?’

  ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this …’

  His voice hardened again. ‘You are hearing it, my dear. I’m sorry, but my mind is made up.’

  Dinah began to feel sick. She was starting to learn that when Van said his mind was made up no amount of argument or pleading would change it. Once, she thought, she might have been able to sway him; but not now, not with her body so swollen and ugly he couldn’t even bear to look at her. And even then, she thought, it might not have worked; Van was totally intransigent, he saw things in black and white, never the shades of grey between. If he had turned so decisively against the baby she did not think that anything on earth would change his mind.

  And in a way she understood. She had known right from the start, hadn’t she, that there was no way he would accept the situation. That was why she had run away. But Van had come after her and for a little while she had dared to believe she had been wr
ong. But she had not been wrong. She had been right first time. Van wanted her but not the baby. And that was precisely what he intended to get, no more, no less.

  She wiped her face with a shaking hand. ‘It’s all very well, but what would you tell people? Everyone knows I’m pregnant – your family, friends, employees at the factory, everyone! And they all think the baby is yours. How could you possibly tell them you had had your baby adopted?’

  ‘I’ve thought of that.’ He turned, ostensibly to open a window, but somehow she knew it was to avoid having to face her. ‘I’ll book you into a private nursing home where I can buy absolute confidentiality. They will arrange the adoption for us – and a very suitable one I know it will be. And we will simply tell all those people you mention that the baby did not survive.’

  She gasped then and simultaneously the child kicked within her.

  ‘It happens, doesn’t it?’ he went on. ‘ Babies are stillborn, or survive only a matter of days. No one would question you too closely. They would be too afraid of upsetting you. It would work, Dinah. It has to work. Then we can simply get on with our lives.’

  It was a nightmare; she felt she was being strangled by the tentacles of some gigantic sea monster and eaten alive. To have thought she was safe – and then to be given this terrible ultimatum!

  Yet had she thought she was safe? In the beginning, maybe, but lately … no. She had sensed Van’s revulsion and known the cause of it. And the knowledge had been a torment. It was too much to ask – too much to ask of any man, and particularly one like Van. Beneath that totally confident exterior lay an Achilles’ heel, some insecurity she did not understand. And though his rejection hurt her, yet still it was Van’s feelings that were most important to her, more than the baby’s, more than her own, more than anything in the world. She worshipped him, she adored him. He was her life: her past, her present and her future. She could not even contemplate losing him now – it was unthinkable. If to keep him she had to give up her baby she would do so. The choice, however painful, was already made.