Deception and Desire

by Janet Tanner

  Strangely, she did not blame him. Van was what he was – if he were not she would probably not love him. And at least, as he had said, he was honest about his feelings. Better that than to see him growing to hate the child that was being passed off as his own, better that than seeing their own relationship deteriorate beneath the pressures and the strains. No, she did not blame Van – typically, she blamed only herself. The imperfection was hers, her own irresponsibility was the root cause of the whole mess. She could not expect Van to pick up the pieces.

  Except that he was going to. Not that he was going to put them back together exactly as she might have hoped, but at least he would make some sort of order out of chaos. If she let him play things his way all the burden would be lifted from her shoulders. Van would look after her. In the midst of her pain Dinah knew there was nothing that mattered to her more.

  He was a beautiful baby. She saw him only once but she would never forget him. He had big blue eyes that seemed to gaze at her for a moment before closing contentedly, a button nose and soft rosebud mouth, and a mass of dark hair covering his slightly pointed head. She looked at him in wonder, lifting one tiny hand with its little pearly-pink nails and stroking it gently with her thumb. Then she held him close against her breast, breathing in the baby smell of him, loving the warm softness and suffused with a rush of tenderness that made her want to weep at the wonder of it.

  She wished then that she could keep him, wished with all her heart that things could have been different. But it was too late now. All the arrangements were made – there could be no going back.

  When they took him away she did not protest. She felt calm in a curiously fatalistic way, though her eyes were so full of tears she could scarcely see him properly. She had been told that a couple were already waiting for Stephen, as she had called him. They were delighted with him. But beyond that she knew nothing. Confidentiality was absolute. He had gone, she knew not where, only that he was loved and wanted very much. The knowledge was a sweet, poignant pain, a comfort and a life sentence.

  When she was strong enough Van took her home and she had to endure the sympathy of those who thought that her baby had been stillborn. At times she had to struggle with herself not to cry out: ‘ He isn’t dead at all – he isn’t! He is alive and well!’ But at other times it was easy, for she was grieving and Van’s family and friends respected her silences and her tears and did not press her to talk when she wanted to be silent.

  For a long while she thought the pain would never go away. She ached for her baby, an empty, searing sense of loss that throbbed in her breasts, full and tender in spite of the injections to stop the milk coming in, and pulled in the muscles of her retracting stomach. She stretched out her arms to the empty air as if to hold him, then wrapped them around herself, sobbing in an ecstasy of grief. At night she lay dry-eyed, staring into the darkness, longing for him, wanting to see him just once more. She tried to find the words to ask Van wasn’t there please some way the decision could be reversed – couldn’t he please get her baby back and accept him as his own? But the words remained unspoken. It was too late. She couldn’t get him back. And even if she could it wouldn’t work.

  Gradually, the pain began to lessen and the terrible fits of depression came less often – though over the years they would never go away entirely.

  There were other things to fill her life now. Van had found them a new home, a farmhouse which he was having renovated, and Dinah immersed herself in planning decor and choosing furniture. Their funds were far from unlimited – Van’s salary was quite modest – but Dinah still had far more cash to play with than she had ever had before and she allowed her imagination full rein as she chose chintzes and wicker, soft natural shaded fabrics and warm unvarnished pine. Only when she came to decide upon the decor for the smallest bedroom did the blackness creep up on her again; this room would have been the nursery. She sat in the middle of the bare board floor, with the boughs of the old apple tree tapping softly against the window, and wept for the baby who would never grow up here, never know this house or her love.

  When the decoration of the house was complete and they moved in, she was like a lost soul for a time. But not for long. Christian Senior was still proving stubborn about manufacturing the sandals and Van was becoming restless.

  ‘Bugger the old man – it’s time to branch out on our own!’ he said to Dinah.

  ‘Branch out – how?’

  ‘If he won’t sanction expansion at his damned factory, we’ll do it ourselves – here.’

  ‘Where here?’ Dinah asked. A little pulse of excitement had begun deep inside her. There was something electrifying about Van in this positive, dynamic mood that stirred her own latent longing to express the ideas that were simmering away in the depths of her creative mind.

  ‘The old barn could be made into a workshop. The roof is sound; if I had lighting installed, some workbenches and a machine or two, we could make a start – on a small scale at least.’

  ‘With the sandals, you mean?’

  ‘Yes, and anything else you can manage to dream up. Accessories of some kind, perhaps. But not shoes. We don’t want to tread too much on the old man’s toes.’

  Dinah giggled. ‘If he’s wearing Kendricks’ safety boots he’d never notice.’

  Van frowned. A sense of humour did not number among his qualities.

  ‘I know he’s refused to do anything that smacks of fashion but there’s no point upsetting him. See what you can come up with.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said, feeling the excitement stir again, making her feel she was standing on the brink of a new and exhilarating adventure, and promising herself that the moment she was alone she would indulge in the almost forgotten luxury of giving free rein to her creative talent.

  ‘Good girl. Come here.’

  Van held out his hand to her and she went to him, laying her head against his chest. It was so nice that things were right between them again.

  Van seemed to have wiped Stephen from his mind; he never referred to him or his existence. Once or twice Dinah had mentioned him and seen Van’s face change, darkening, clamming up.

  ‘It’s over now,’ he said. ‘Best just forget it.’

  Dinah knew she could not forget so easily but the sense of loss made her all the more desperate for Van’s love and approval.

  The revulsion he had felt when she was pregnant seemed to have gone now; they made love often and he was teaching her to enjoy every aspect of physical contact. But though she was a willing pupil his previous rejection of her had gone deep and she could not shake free of the fear that one day he might reject her again. Had it been the fact that the baby was not his that had made him turn away from her in disgust – or had it been the altered shape of her body? Suppose he should feel the same when the time came for them to start a family? She couldn’t bear to go through it all over again – and certainly Van had not mentioned trying for a baby of their own. Dinah prayed that she would not become pregnant again by accident, and so far her prayers had been answered.

  But her insecurity went even deeper. It was a darkness inside her that she could not explain, unless it was that she had lost Van once and so she might lose him again. Close as they were, and deeply in love, there was a part of him she could not reach and knew she would never possess.

  When Van asked her to suggest some more ideas for what he thought of as his pet project it seemed to Dinah not only an exciting challenge but also a wonderful opportunity to impress him with her skills and show him that she was not just a foolish girl who had managed to get herself into trouble. The ideas she had had for the footwear factory had been all very well, but they had been limited to the criteria of fitting in with existing production methods and tailored to appeal to Christian Senior. The walking boots were already doing very well in the markets to which they had been introduced, but they were still boots for all that, and hardly inspiring, and the riding boots had never got off the ground at all. As for the ‘
Bible sandals’, though she was quite pleased with the concept, it was not what she would have chosen to design.

  Now Van had suggested accessories and the word opened up a whole new world to her. Accessories was certainly something she could be enthusiastic about – a wide range to give full scope to her skills.

  There were still limits to be observed, of course. She couldn’t come up with anything too complicated or complex – they simply did not have the facilities to produce anything beyond the most simple, for there would be room for perhaps only one cutting table and one or two machines at most – but Dinah did not mind that. She had always preferred the classically simple, her taste was for something she had never before been able to indulge – quality, with a hint of the original. Now, carefully bearing in mind that to begin with at least she and Van would have to make up anything she designed themselves, Dinah began her search for ideas.

  Since Van’s background was in leather, that was an obvious starting point; to it she added her own love of the natural. Searching through countless glossy magazines, scribbling and sketching the ideas for bags and belts that came to her then and at the oddest moments – in the bath, cooking dinner, even, sometimes, in bed – she was at last able to forget her baby, at first for minutes, then hours, then eventually days at a time. At first she was shy and reluctant to show her sketches to Van, and she remembered with a twinge of poignancy how ready she had been when she had first known him to share her inspirations. Now she felt curiously protective, both of them and of herself, as if she was afraid they might suffer the same rejection as Stephen. Perhaps, she thought, it was simply that it was much more important now that Van should like her ideas, because on them the future was to be based; in her heart, though, she acknowledged it was more. Last time around she hadn’t known how ruthless Van could be. Now she had first-hand experience of it and she had been left with the bruises.

  Van’s reaction when she showed him the first set of sketches seemed to bear out her fears. He was at best noncommittal, at worst dismissive.

  ‘They are run-of-the-mill. Not original enough.’

  ‘They are original!’

  ‘Not so as you’d notice. There are belts just like that on market stalls all over the place.’

  ‘I’ve never seen any!’

  ‘Try going to Portugal, or one of the Greek islands. They’re good quality, some of them, too.’

  Dinah tried not to be hurt. She went away and tried again, letting her imagination run riot. But this time Van’s reaction was even less encouraging.

  ‘Oh my God, Dinah, what have we got here?’

  ‘You said to be original,’ she said defensively.

  ‘Yes, but these are completely over the top. Where the hell would you find a market for these – apart from Carnaby Street, perhaps? Can you imagine anyone actually carrying that bag? And we’ve got to make the stuff, remember. Plaited leather is all very well, but … What we want is something simple but exclusive to us. A sort of trademark, to stamp our identity in the minds of the public right from the beginning. Do you understand?’

  Dinah nodded. She understood. It was just that she was beginning to lose faith in her ability to do what he wanted. For days the new ideas she needed refused to come, she walked around in a daze, she wept, she pummelled her head with her fists. She thought she was going mad, or having a nervous breakdown, or both. When she could bear the four walls of the house around her no longer she went out for a walk, hoping that the fresh air would blow the cobwebs away but finding to her frustration that the cotton-wool cloud enveloping her had gone along too.

  It’s no good – I just can’t do it! she thought. Oh please, please, let me have just one little inspiration, one really good idea, just to show Van I can do it!

  Afterwards Dinah always remembered that moment in absolute detail, for it seemed to be the beginning of everything. One moment a sense of helplessness was choking her, the next she looked down and saw a grass snake, its movement a perfect graceful curve through the scrubby grass. It was there so briefly and then gone, but in her mind’s eye she could see it still – the markings on its skin, the fluid way it moved. Dinah caught her lip between her teeth; the idea was not just taking shape but exploding in her brain so fast she didn’t know if she could catch it.

  For the first time for weeks she had gone out without pencil and paper. She hurried home, thoughts racing. When Van came in from the factory at six that evening he found the back door – and all the other doors in the house – wide open, with the exception of the smallest bedroom, which Dinah had taken to using as a den.

  ‘Dinah, are you all right?’ he called anxiously.

  Dinah was sitting in the middle of the floor surrounded by pages from her sketch pad. She looked up and smiled, that wonderful come-alive smile that could make his heart turn over.

  ‘I think I’ve got it,’ she said, and he knew from her tone that this time she probably had. But he exercised caution all the same.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Come and see!’ She pulled him down on to the floor beside her. ‘You see this little grass snake? He’s our trademark. See how beautiful he is? He curves into the buckle for a belt and his tail flicks to make a join at the back. Or he can decorate a bag, or even make a clasp. I know you don’t want to do shoes, but if you did you could put him around the back of the heel – like this – and if ever, ever, we could get our own fabric printed I’d work him into the design for a silk scarf. Now – what do you think? Don’t you think I’m brilliant?’

  He had to smile then too. The idea was brilliant, exactly what he had been looking for. But he didn’t want her to get too carried away.

  ‘Well done,’ he said, with more restraint than he was feeling. ‘Yes, I think that is one we can use.’

  Van decided they would trade under an amalgam of their two names – Vandina. Their logo was the grass snake and their slogan was ‘A Touch of the Country’. Van had dreamed that up and Dinah had greeted it with all the enthusiasm he had denied her.

  They made the belts in the barn which Van had converted into a makeshift workroom, and to begin with they employed a staff of one.

  Fred Lockyear had been with Kendricks from the time he was demobbed from the army in 1945 until he retired, six months previously, at the age of sixty-five. He was a solid and reliable, if unimaginative, craftsman, and he was only too pleased to oblige when Van visited him and suggested he might come out of retirement to work a few hours a week for the new enterprise.

  ‘To tell you the truth I’m bored stiff stuck at home,’ he told Van. ‘The missus complains I’m under her feet all the time – and I could do with earning a few bob to help make my pension go a bit further.’

  When it came to cutting and stitching Fred’s hand was as steady as it had ever been, and Dinah took over for the artistic snake emblems which Fred referred to as ‘the twiddly bits’.

  Van handled the marketing himself. There was no way they could mass produce the belts, and in any case Van did not want to. Their very exclusivity was their selling point – the fact that each was handmade and slightly different. Van went direct to the big London stores, Harrods and Harvey Nichols and Swan and Edgar, and came home with his order book full. Fred and Dinah worked flat out to fill the orders – and within a week the stores were back requesting repeat orders and a sight of any new lines Vandina might produce.

  Scenting success, Van sent Dinah to her little studio to refine some more of her ideas ready for production, and Fred brought in his daughter, Mandy – who had also worked for Kendricks before leaving to get married and start a family and who was now glad of the chance of a few hours’ work a week – and a cousin, similarly placed, who had been a glove machinist.

  ‘I feel I’m being overrun by Lockyears!’ Dinah confided to Van, but she did not mind. They were all good workers, and besides, the cousin’s previous work experience had given Dinah another idea – why not gloves? With the help of the cousin, a plump, jolly woman named Marian, she de
signed a glove with the trademark snake worked in stitching at the wrist.

  Glove-making required a different machine. Van went to see the bank manager and arranged for a loan to cover the capital expenditure, and the gloves went into production. Once again, they were a huge success, and since some of the work on them could be done at home, by hand, Marian suggested that some of her former colleagues could be employed as outworkers. In between designing and stitching her ‘twiddly bits’ Dinah found herself parcelling half-made gloves for the outworkers to collect, checking their handiwork and keeping records.

  Now there were simply not enough hours in the day – she was up with the dawn and scarcely ever in bed before the small hours. She did not mind the hard work – being fully occupied meant she had no time for fretting over Stephen – but there were times when she felt she was being dragged away from what she did best: planning and designing. Vandina was, she thought, a little like Frankenstein’s monster – it seemed to have acquired a life of its own, taking her over body and soul.

  Christian Senior was becoming awkward too. Like everyone else he believed that the baby had been stillborn and at first he had viewed his son’s enterprise, with a certain amused indulgence, thinking it a harmless amateur operation to give Dinah something to occupy herself and keep her mind off her tragic loss. But as Vandina grew and prospered, with Van still handling the marketing and accounting himself, he began to feel less kindly towards it.

  ‘You are spending too much time fart-assing about,’ he told Van bluntly. ‘You’re hardly ever in your office these days. All you seem to think about is Dinah’s damn-fool fripperies.’

  ‘Dinah’s fripperies, as you call them, are doing very well indeed.’