by Daphne Clair
It had made Annys determined that she would be independent, never working for anyone else if she could help it. Her teachers had consistently praised her ability, her mother and father were very proud of that, and early on they had started a special savings account for her education. Inflation had eroded its value, but when her father had got his redundancy payment he said, ‘At least we can still afford to put Annys through university.’
She’d always come top of the class in school and done well in team sports and even better in athletics and tennis, and she’d continued her success at university. Her career choice had surprised her parents, who had vaguely pictured for her a future in academia or perhaps law or even medicine, but she had had other plans. After considering and discarding several options she had set her sights on running her own business, and her interest in both design and physical recreation led her to focus on a field that seemed made for her. There was, she thought, a need for clothing that was both attractive and comfortable for sportswomen and men, durable track and field wear that would allow them to participate in their sport with freedom of movement, comfort and safety, and know that they looked good at the same time.
Her designs were distinctive yet practical. Not only sports people but others who liked smart casual clothes were attracted to them. And she had just begun making a name for herself among those in the know when she had married Reid Bannerman.
At the end of their week-long official honeymoon Reid had to go and meet his clients. She kissed him goodbye lingeringly on the doorstep of their bungalow, and on his return she had a fresh salad and cold pork waiting for him. It waited a bit longer, because somehow the welcoming kiss she gave him led to their making love on the divan in the living-room. But for another two weeks Reid came home to Annys just as he’d wanted to, and she was always there to meet him, usually with a meal on the table.
Playing house, Annys reminded herself cynically, looking back. She’d known what it was, but perhaps Reid hadn’t.
Annys moved to his flat in Wellington, and Reid said he could send other members of his team on some of the trips he used to undertake himself so he’d be home more.
She tried to keep herself free when he was home, because he still spent much of his time travelling. She would ignore the itch to get out her pad and pencils, tell herself she could do it when he was away, when she needed something to fill the hole left in her life by his temporary absence.
The first time he came in one day and found her busy drawing, pages of her sketching pad strewn all over the table and the divan, he’d just kissed the top of her head and looked interested in the designs she’d created, and suggested they go out to eat, it was time he bought her dinner.
As her designs became more popular, and her ambitions began to take shape, she wasn’t able to compartmentalise her life in that way. Reid would cook or bring in take-aways when she had a deadline to meet, and then wait for her to come to bed and take her in his arms, and his lovemaking would ease away the tension that had kept her going until after midnight. When she had the chance at a cheap lease for her first boutique, he encouraged her to go ahead. The long hours she put in with her outworkers sewing up enough stock for opening day made her, for the first time, too tired to make love to him. And even then he just soothed her to sleep in his arms and said it didn’t matter.
He had to go away the day after the opening, with an admonition to her not to work too hard. Irritably, she wondered how she was supposed to restock without working, because the opening had been a roaring success, and the stock heavily depleted. She had looked round afterwards with a small sense of panic, and known that she would have to find at least one more reliable machinist to keep up with demand if this was any indication.
She was conscious of a guilty sense of relief that Reid was going to be away for a couple of weeks. It would give her a chance to concentrate on the business at this vital time.
When he arrived back, she heard his key in the lock and as usual flew to meet him.
He whispered in her ear, ‘Let’s go to bed.’
But she hung back, saying regretfully, ‘I have to finish this tonight, really. I’ll make you a quick dinner and...see you later, OK?’
‘I don’t need dinner,’ he said. ‘I had a meal on the plane. I’ll take a shower and go to bed.’
When she crept in beside him hours later he was fast asleep. She contemplated waking him, but she was exhausted, too. So exhausted that she forgot to set the alarm, and when she woke he was sitting on the bed holding a single red rose.
‘You look beautiful, asleep,’ he told her. He bent to kiss her, and she wound her arms about him, but in a few moments she moved her head and squinted at the clock. ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ she demanded, gaping at the time.
‘I have now.’ He bent to kiss her again, but she was struggling up.
‘I have to see my pattern-cutter. I promised I’d have those drafts to her by nine.’
He looked momentarily impatient, but made her coffee and toast while she flung on some clothes, and she drank the coffee but left the toast. She went straight from the pattern-cutter to the shop and spent the rest of the day there, phoning home to tell Reid she wouldn’t be back until after five.
‘Shall I take you out to dinner?’ he suggested. And, remembering his fleeting irritation that morning, she said yes, that would be lovely, thinking she was behind in her book-keeping, and she’d have to get up early in the morning to do it.
That was the morning he came up behind her chair a couple of hours after she’d crept quietly from their bed, put his arms about her and said, ‘What ungodly hour did you get up?’
‘Five. If I don’t do this, I’ll get so far behind I won’t be able to sort it out when tax time comes around.’
‘I could get my accountant to do it.’ He massaged her shoulders absently.
‘I can’t afford an accountant, not yet.’
‘You don’t need to.’ He kissed her neck. ‘I’ll pay him.’
‘No. This is my business, and I’ll run it on the money I make.’
‘I love your independence, darling.’ He bent and put his lips to her ear. ‘But I love your body even more.’
Annys laughed. ‘Reid, I’ve got to—’
‘I’ll help you with it,’ he promised. ‘Later.’ His lips found hers, and he picked her up off the chair and bore her back to bed.
There was the time he phoned to say he was bringing some people home, and could she manage a meal for them? They were two Japanese men from a construction company that was planning to build a huge residential and commercial complex on Australia’s Gold Coast. ‘I want to clinch this contract,’ Reid said. ‘It’ll be the biggest project I’ve ever had, and their preliminary designs are really interesting. I’ll have to work closely with the architects. These people have been wined and dined at hotels and restaurants for weeks now—I think they’d appreciate a quiet evening and some home cooking.’
She’d cleared her work off the dining-room table and spread it out on the bed in the spare room, hastily used the vacuum cleaner and a duster, dashed out to buy ingredients for a dinner with a distinctively New Zealand character that she hoped was going to be appetising to Japanese palates, and spent the next two hours preparing it.
After the guests had departed, Reid returned from driving them to their hotel to find her immersed up to her elbows in dishwater.
‘Why don’t you leave that,’ he said, slipping his arms about her waist to kiss her nape, ‘and come to bed?’
And Annys snapped, ‘Is that all you can think about?’
He stepped back. ‘Is that a yes or a no?’
But she wasn’t to be humoured. ‘You go to bed if you like,’ she said. ‘I still have work to do.’ She rattled another dish into the rack.
‘Can’t it wait?’
‘It’s already waited for—’ she glanced at her watch ‘—seven hours. I should have done it tonight.’
‘Look, I’ll finish the dishes. Suppose
you get some sleep and tackle the job in the morning?’
‘Thanks a lot,’ she muttered ungraciously, and stalked off to get her drawings.
When he came out of the kitchen she was frowning over them at the table.
‘You should have said,’ he told her, ‘if you didn’t have time to cook. I’d have taken them to a restaurant.’
‘You told me you didn’t want to do that,’ She drew a line, muttered, ‘Damn,’ and screwed up the paper, throwing it on the floor.
Reid bent to pick it up and toss it into the waste-basket in the corner. ‘We should fix up the spare room as a workroom for you,’ he said.
‘Sorry if I’m too messy for you.’ She positioned another piece of paper and began sketching.
‘Don’t be silly,’ he said shortly. ‘Look, if you don’t want to help entertain my business contacts, you can always say no.’
‘Thank you,’ Annys said with heavy irony. ‘I don’t want to entertain your business contacts, OK?’
There was a small silence. ‘All right,’ he said evenly. ‘I won’t ask you again.’
He turned and went off to bed without saying goodnight, and Annys tried to blot out the guilty sickness in the pit of her stomach, and concentrate on what she was doing.
Maybe that was the first crack in their marriage. Reid was as good as his word, and never asked her to help entertain clients again. He would phone instead and tell her he wouldn’t be in for dinner. Annys felt guilty but her work took so much of her time away from Reid that she resisted the impulse to retract her veto. She felt they needed every minute alone together that they could manage to squeeze into two busy schedules. And she could squeeze in more if she was able to work while he was with his business associates.
The Japanese-Australian project took a great deal of Reid’s time, and he began spending days and weeks at a time on the Gold Coast. ‘I can’t leave this one to the others,’ he told her, asking her to be patient. ‘It’s too important, and anyway our resources are going to be stretched to their limit. As it is I think I’m going to have to advertise for more staff.’
‘It’s all right,’ Annys assured him, in the pleasant satiety they shared after making love. ‘I’ll miss you, but I know how you feel about being there.’ Like her, he had to know what was happening in every aspect of the business. They were both take-charge people, reluctant to delegate unless they had absolute confidence in a person, impatient when they saw something done less effectively than they could do it themselves.
‘Why don’t you come with me?’ He ran a finger down her arm, picked up her hand and nibbled gently on her fingers. ‘Great surfing beaches on the Gold Coast. We could have fun.’
‘I can’t.’ She shook her head regretfully, tamping down a faint resentment that he should imagine she could just drop everything for a spur-of-the-moment holiday. ‘My boutique manager’s leaving, remember? If I don’t find someone for the job soon I’ll have to take over myself until a suitable applicant appears.’
‘Maybe you’re too choosy.’ He lay back and settled her against his chest. ‘How many applicants have you turned down so far?’
‘Half a dozen. I can’t take just anyone, Reid. It’s important to have the right person.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll get myself a Gold Coast beach bunny instead.’
‘You will not!’ Annys picked up a pillow and he fended her off, laughing, taking it from her to throw it on the floor. In the ensuing tussle they ended up on the floor too, wrestling, panting and laughing, until he had her pinned to the carpet with her head on the disputed pillow, and her hands held by his on either side of it. ‘Give in?’ he taunted her.
‘Never!’
He settled his body closer, moving suggestively, his eyes teasing. ‘Now?’
Annys shook her head.
His head lowered, his lips on her throat. ‘Now?’
On a breath of laughter, Annys said, ‘No!’
‘Now?’ he mumbled as his mouth descended lower.
Annys sighed and relaxed, her limbs going fluid. ‘You don’t play fair,’ she complained.
‘What’s fair?’ His hands moved, freeing hers, and she instantly grasped his hair with one hand and shoved hard with the other, reversing their positions as she straddled him with her long, strong legs.
‘Now!’ she said triumphantly. ‘Do you give in?’
‘Absolutely!’ he assured her, holding up his hands in surrender. ‘I have no defence against female muscle. Take me—I’m yours!’
Annys laughed and bent her head to his mouth.
She worked like a beaver when he was away on the Gold Coast project, making a special effort to clear the decks for his return. She hired Kate Driver as boutique manager, a little hesitantly because Kate admitted frankly she hadn’t participated in sports since her teenage days, except for the odd game of social tennis. But she took a keen interest in her children’s various sports clubs, and she had experience at selling and at keeping books.
It was a decision Annys had never regretted. Kate took so much of the workload off her shoulders that she began to think about expanding, opening another boutique in Auckland.
‘Sure you can handle it?’ Reid asked doubtfully when she mentioned the idea.
Annys immediately bristled. ‘What makes you think I couldn’t?’
‘I didn’t mean that. I just don’t want you to get as exhausted as you were before the last opening.’
‘I probably will,’ she admitted frankly. ‘But it’s only temporary—’
‘It went on quite a long time, as I recall. And you can’t keep driving yourself like that.’
‘Why not?’ Annys demanded. ‘You do.’
He paused for a moment, then said softly, ‘We’re not in competition, are we?’
She looked at him blankly. ‘I don’t know what you mean. Of course we’re not. We work in totally different fields.’
‘I’m not sure what I meant myself,’ he admitted.
‘You know what I think?’
‘What?’ he asked, smiling down at her as she approached him and wound her arms about his neck.
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that, deep down, you want a traditional, submissive little wife, greeting you at the door every night with your pipe and slippers.’
Reid shouted with laughter. ‘If I’d wanted that,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t have married a liberated, ambitious over-achiever like you.’
‘Over-achiever?’
‘It isn’t a criticism,’ he assured her. ‘In my job, the last thing I need is a clinging vine sitting at home and fretting every time I’m out of her sight. I love your strength, your self-assurance. I know you’re with me because you want to be, not because you need a meal ticket, or someone you can lean on.’
‘So don’t worry about me,’ Annys suggested. ‘I can look after myself.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
In the lonely night hours on anchor watch Annys found herself recalling the past. When had it all started to go wrong? When she had opened the second boutique and Reid had come home early from a trip to the Philippines, only to find an empty flat because she was in Auckland supervising the redecoration?
Or when she had arrived back a few days afterwards, tired and looking forward to falling into bed, and Reid had been entertaining a woman in their lounge? A woman whose blonde, blue-eyed prettiness was enhanced by clever make-up and an expensive silk suit that ought to have been businesslike but on her managed to look utterly feminine.
Reid had seemed to find his wife’s jealousy rather amusing. ‘Carla’s an architect,’ he told her. ‘We’ve been working together, I had to come back here to fetch a blueprint, and I asked her in for a drink.’ His eyes glinting, he added, ‘And I don’t expect to have to explain myself every time I invite a colleague into my home when you don’t happen to be there.’
If she hadn’t been so tired, and so disappointed, because she’d been looking forward to one of their passionate reunions, Annys might have react
ed differently. But the hint of exasperated anger, the imagined accusation, fired her temper in return. She pointed out that to her knowledge he had never invited a male colleague home, and he rejoined that she’d made it plain she preferred not to meet them. He hadn’t known she was coming tonight; he’d expected her the following day.
‘I see,’ Annys said, seething.
And Reid snapped, ‘You damn well don’t. This is stupid. I’m going to bed.’
‘Don’t turn your back on me!’ Annys shouted.
He turned slowly and said, his face grim, his voice hard, ‘And don’t you yell at me!’ His eyes ran over her, his expression softening fractionally. ‘You look tired to death. Come to bed.’
She took that to mean she looked a fright. The flawless image of Carla the architect rose before her eyes. ‘I’ll go to bed when I’m ready,’ she said. ‘Don’t wait.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Reid said, and left her wanting to throw something at his oblivious back, or burst into tears, or tear someone limb from limb, preferably Carla.
Annys gave a wry smile in the darkness, watching a silver ripple appear and disappear on the black midnight water. She folded her arms about herself, snuggled into a warm wool jersey, and pricked her ears at a small sound from somewhere along the deck.
Yes, she thought, maybe that was when the crack began to widen. For the first time when they were together they had slept apart on the big double bed. In the morning they had made love with a fierceness that yet held some hurt and anger. But it was after that night that she had unwillingly begun to wonder just what Reid did on those trips away, and who with? He was a very physical, very passionate man. Had he really been enduring long weeks of abstinence when he was away from her? Or had he found solace in other women’s arms?
She’d tried to close her mind to those insidious thoughts, the tormenting questions. Surely she could trust him. He was her husband. She loved him. He’d never shown the slightest doubt of her integrity, despite the many times they’d been apart. How could she entertain such jealous suspicions about him?