by Rebecca Lang
'If you like,' she said, hardly able to get the words out because her throat felt as though it had closed up from nerves. 'As I said, there isn't anybody else. I guess I've always loved you...'
He took so long to say anything that she began to feel sick with apprehension. This mature Joel was perhaps more than she could handle.
'I'm tempted,' he said slowly, 'but I find that I can't trust what you're saying. I don't want to allow myself to trust it.'
'That sounds rather like damning with faint praise,' she said. 'Even though the word "tempted" does have a certain air of optimism about it.' To uphold her composure, she attempted to tone down the complete seriousness of her proposal.
'It isn't that I don't trust you as a person, Nell...it's not that exactly,' he went on. 'Perhaps it's more to do with me than you—my inability to have faith, or something. I have been accused of being caustic and sarcastic. But there it is, Nell, there it is. I was idealistic and upright in my youth, so maybe it's a case of the higher one goes, the farther one falls... or something like that.'
'I...I know you said that you don't want to marry, ever,' Nell said, a note of something like desperation in her tone. 'We...we could live together...here, with Alec. Between us we have quite a large extended family.'
'That way,' he said cynically, 'I would have no legal rights over my son, any more than I would if we weren't living together.'
'You mean you wouldn't want to live with me? Is that it?' She felt absurd at having to keep her voice down when she wanted to shout at him, to rant and rave. 'I don't understand what you want.'
'I expect I would enjoy living with you, Nell,' he murmured. 'I always did enjoy sharing the same bed, for the short time that we did so. I just don't know at this moment.'
'Really?' she said hotly. 'You can't have it all ways, Joel. If you don't want marriage, or to live with me, what else is there?'
'Two people don't have to be married or live together to share a bed,' he remarked casually, as though the matter were not deadly serious. 'That would be fine by me, so long as I could see my son.'
Momentarily speechless, she gathered her defences.
'Would it?' she said, her voice tight. 'I'm sick and tired of you judging me for what I did when I was sixteen. I was terrified, I didn't have any other way out...' Another silence took hold while she fought her emotions.
'I'm not exactly judging you, Nell,' he said softly. 'It's just that I've found over the past few weeks that I've felt very disturbed, more than I ever suspected I would, about the fact that for ten years I didn't know I was a father,' Joel said.
He got up and walked to the edge of the patio, looking out over the shady garden, his hands in his trouser pockets. 'All those wasted years.'
Nell got up to stand near him. 'I understand,' she said desperately.
'I can't trust, you see,' he said quietly, matter-of-factly. 'And that is a prerequisite for what you're suggesting. I can't trust that you love me, as you say. I'm not blaming you for that. Perhaps that's a fault in me, less to do with you...perhaps nothing to do with you. I don't know.'
'Have there been...many other women?' Nell asked, glancing quickly at his profile, hardly able to get the words out because her throat felt tight.
'Two or three,' he said. 'Who meant anything, that is.'
Jealousy of those unknown women added to Nell's emotional turmoil and she felt slightly sick. 'What happened to them?'
'There didn't seem to be any future in the relationships... for either of us,' he said.
Nell was absolved from replying by the sudden appearance of Alec at the patio door.
'Dad!' he said excitedly. 'Felix has climbed up to the curtain rod in my room and won't come down. He went right up the curtains. Come and see.'
'Sounds like he's ready to go back into his basket,' Joel said.
'I was wondering if I should whistle "Good King Wenceslas",' Alec said, grinning, 'to make him come down.'
'It's worth a try,' Joel said. 'I'll come up in a few minutes. I'm just talking to your mother.'
'Were you arguing?' Alec asked, looking perceptively from one to the other.
'No! Yes...sort of,' Nell said.
'About me?' he said.
'Indirectly,' Joel said quickly, saving her from having to answer again. 'Your mother thinks we ought to live together, all three of us as a family.'
Alec's mouth dropped open, then before he could say anything, Joel put a hand on his shoulder, turned him round to face the door. 'Come on, son,' he said. 'Let's get that hyperactive cat down before he shreds your curtains.'
As they disappeared from view, Nell let out a couple of succinct expletives under her breath. It was clear from Alec's expression that he would like nothing more than for them to live together. Maybe that would have some influence.
Well, she had put her cards on the table and Joel had not picked them up. Now Alec had been drawn into the discussion too early. And she again felt that obscure jealousy at the easy camaraderie between father and son. Although it was something she had both wanted and dreamed about, the reality made her feel that she was somehow excluded. It depressed her.
As she thought about it, she knew intuitively that it was something like the poignant regret that Joel was feeling for the years gone by. Maybe he was right to be cautious—after all, she hadn't thought about feeling excluded. Perhaps that was what parenthood was all about. You shared your children, you didn't own them, and at some point they would go away from you. With luck, if you had been a good parent, they would come back as young adults and remain in your life.
'Welcome to reality,' she muttered to herself. It was the reality of having to share the son she loved so much and thought of as hers alone. Her own parents had always been there, so she did hot include them in her proprietorial feelings. Would I feel somehow vindicated if there was friction between father and son? she asked herself.
Carefully, because her hands were shaking, she gathered the glasses together onto a tray. Sudden tears filled her eyes, as a deeper feeling of sadness assailed her. For her, the mood of the day had collapsed like a pricked balloon and she didn't know how she would get thought the early evening.
As she loaded the cups into the dishwasher, Joel came back out to the kitchen and took her arm, making her pause. His face was pale and tense. 'You didn't really answer my question about what the arrangement would be between me and Alec if you were to marry,' he said. 'Let's get that clear.'
'I'm not planning to marry,' she said abruptly.
'Let's assume you are,' he said.
'All right,' she said, straightening up and pushing strands of hair away from her hot face. 'I would, of course, out of courtesy, let you know what was happening, and you would still be Alec's father and have contact with him, but I don't think I have to—in any way, shape, or form—ask your permission about who I marry. If you don't want me, you as sure as hell are not going to get any say in the matter if someone else wants me.' Abruptly, she shook off his restraining hand. 'I hope that's perfectly clear.'
Nell was breathing hard, blinking to dissipate the tears, humiliated by having bared her soul to no avail.
'Dad!' Alec called from the front hall.
'Alec!' Nell called, with an authority that her son would dare not challenge. 'I want you to help me clear up before you do anything else.'
'All right, Mum,' he said quickly as he came into the kitchen, sensing her mood.
'I'm not bringing him up to be a loafer,' she said to Joel.
They all helped to clear up the kitchen, Nell and Joel relieved by the charming chatter of Alec, who continued to tell Joel about the details of his life, as though he had been bottling it all up for a long time, just waiting for his real father to give a listening ear.
'Are we really all going to live together here?' he asked abruptly, having made an obvious effort to get up his courage to ask, looking from one to the other.
'Well,' Nell said, when Joel declined to answer. 'He...your father doesn't want
that. Anyway, it's early days yet, you've only just found each other.'
'Would you like that?' Joel asked quietly.
'Yes, I think so,' Alec said. 'I'm the only boy at my school who has never had a father. Some of the other kids' parents are divorced, but the fathers come to the school sometimes, they see them sometimes. The sports days are the worst...' His voice trailed off, as though he had perhaps said too much, which might seem like a criticism of his mother.
Nell and Joel sat in silence, suitably chastened.
'Of course, I love Grandad,' Alec qualified, 'but I've always wanted my real dad...'
'That's understandable, Alec,' Joel said. 'I'm going to be around from now on. We don't have to live together for that. If you'll invite me to your sports day, I'd love to come.'
'All right,' Alec said, grinning.
A poignant sadness was so strong in Nell that she thought she might burst into tears, so she got up from the table to plug in a kettle for coffee and get cups out of a cupboard, thinking of the old saying about chickens coming home to roost.
In her mind's eye she could see Alec as a baby, smiling his first smile at her...Alec at eighteen months running towards her on a beach, into her open arms, laughing with delight...Alec digging in sand, with the sparkling sea as a backdrop...Alec at four starting junior kindergarten, his eyes wide with both interest and apprehension at having to go into a new world on his own. All that without Joel. Yet he had been in her mind. She had not fully considered that he would have been in the mind of her son also.
'Would you like coffee, Joel?' she asked brightly, blinking back moisture from her eyes. She hadn't realized that in her new incarnation as Dr Montague she could be so tearful. At least she wasn't dead emotionally, hadn't grown hard, from all that she had to deal with professionally, which was something she dreaded. That was something to be thankful for. 'Or maybe a glass of port?'
Joel came over to her. 'Let me help,' he offered gently. 'That was a great meal, Nell. Thank you. And it's been a long time since anyone's offered me a glass of port so, if I may, I'll have both coffee and port.'
'Sure,' she said. 'It's a good vintage port that a grateful patient gave me. Alec, show your father where the port is, and the glasses.'
So it was with mixed feelings that she and Alec waved goodbye to Joel shortly before it was time for Alec to go to bed.
'Bye, Dad. It's been a great day,' Alec had said as Joel had left, hovering close to Joel, sorry to see him go.
'Yes, it has,' Joel had said, ruffling Alec's hair, the dark hair that was so like his own.
'Will you come back soon?' Alec had asked. 'And bring Felix.'
'I'll come whenever you invite me. Thanks again, Nell.' As he had kissed her on the cheek, he had touched her face briefly with his hand. 'See you both again very soon, I hope.'
Nell shut the door. 'I'll run a bath for you,' she said to her son.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When Alec was in bed, Nell collapsed onto a sofa in the sitting room, a small glass of port in her hand. Only now that she was alone could she let her emotions come fully to the surface, let the muscles of her face crumple into an expression of grief that she had held in check for most of the evening.
It was a relief to let the silent tears ooze out of her eyes and run unwiped down her cheeks. She let them drip where they would. Sometimes it was good to cry. 'Have a good cry, you'll feel better,' her mother had often said in the distant past. Usually, in the present, she had to be strong for other people—there were few opportunities where she could fully express her emotions. At work, her skills and training acted as a buffer between her and her emotions, otherwise they would often overwhelm her. Thus, there was a great satisfaction in honing one's professional skills. There wasn't the same buffer to prepare her for Joel.
Leaning sideways, she put her cheek against a soft, down-filled sofa cushion, letting all the emotion into full consciousness. Not least of all the concerns she was mulling over was the one of how her revelations of today would affect her working relationship with Joel, if indeed it would. Perhaps he had been aware that she loved him, before she had stated it so baldly. There would, no doubt, be a wariness between them. From long experience, she was good at tuning out her private life while at work. It was a case of discipline and necessity, to be totally focussed on the job in hand.
It was good to be alone for a while, in the quiet of her own house, with nothing that she had to do. She moved her gaze slowly around the familiar room she loved, sparsely but tastefully furnished with old pieces, some given to her, some bought at auctions and semi-antique shops. On the mantelpiece above the open fireplace a clock ticked gently, a soothing sound, like the beating of a heart. The house was old, mellow and benign in its atmosphere, full of character and history. The sitting room had oak panelling and heavy oak doors. Other families had lived there, happy families, she always liked to think, over the last one hundred and fifty years or so. Sometimes when she was sad she imagined that the spirits of those people gathered round her to give her support and love.
She had a mortgage on the house, her parents having loaned her the down-payment for it. She was hoping to pay them back over the next few years. All her life she had been surrounded by consideration and love. It had not been a calculated love that expected returns, yet it had been clear to her that her parents expected her to make full, positive use of what was given to her. They did not want it all thrown back into their faces. In order to give to her and her two sisters they has made sacrifices, financial and otherwise, which had become a way of life for them.
That same care had been extended to her son. Where they had left off, she had taken over. The biggest regret had always been that Alec did not have a father. Now she knew that she wanted to include Joel in her life, wanted to bring him into the circle, wanted him to be happy with her and Alec. As far as it was possible within her power, she wanted to help Joel to find the basic happiness that she had always had, even with the turmoil of being a single parent. You made yourself happy, that was her firm belief, yet sometimes you were a victim of circumstance, when you had to look for ways out and have the courage to take them. Sometimes, through no fault of your own, fate dealt you a blow.
Joel had also had a privileged childhood, he and his brother, which had, she knew, been tempered by a strong—-and rare in their society—sense of noblesse oblige, instilled by his parents, who were both lawyers. They, too, had been loving parents, although they had not spent as much time with their two sons as they would have liked.
Nell let her mind dwell for a few moments on another topic that she usually shied away from: that of more children. She wanted more children, if she could, perhaps two more. Because the possibility of it seemed more and more remote, she pushed it away.
As she slowly sipped the port, as the measured minutes ticked by, she examined all the regret of the past and came full circle to the present moment. She had less regret than many individuals of her age; she had been very fortunate, her life was good. By the time the glass was empty she knew that she had done the right things that day. Let the future bring what it may. She would play it by ear.
As though on some sort of cue, as though she had conjured up something by the intensity of her emotion and longing, the headlights of a car passed a swathe of light over the sitting-room window from the now dark evening. It illuminated the room momentarily, where the curtains were undrawn. From her position facing the large bay window she could see, in the light of a streetlamp, that the car was Joel's and had made the turn from the street into the driveway of the house. It came slowly to a stop, then the lights were extinguished.
Calmly, as though she were standing outside of herself, watching her own actions, she got up quickly to shut the kitchen door, where the dogs were in their beds. Already one of them was barking quietly, having picked up a sound.
'It's all right,' she said to them. 'Lie down.' They were good, alert watchdogs, always protecting her, and she loved them fiercely. 'Good girls
!'
Shutting the door between the kitchen and the hall, she padded with bare feet to the front door to open it before Joel could ring the bell that would send the dogs into a cacophony of barking.
He was the first to speak as he came close to her, illuminated by the light over the front door. He looked pale and haggard.
'Hello, Nell,' he said quietly. 'I found that I couldn't let this day go by without talking to you again. May I come in?'
She nodded, slightly muzzy from the port she had drunk, then led him into the sitting room and shut the door quietly.
'What?' she said, turning to face him, forcing herself to stay calm when she wanted to throw herself into his arms.
'I've been boorish and I've come to apologize,' he said. 'It's been a wonderful day, largely your doing, and I did my best to spoil it, so I'm sorry, Nell. Once I got back to my apartment, I realized how unforgivable I'd been.'
Nell licked her dry lips, staring at him, a gradual sense of something like peace coming over her as they stood close. 'You said what you thought at the time,' she said, her voice sounding rusty. 'I respect you for that.' With a calmness that she did not feel, she added, 'Come and sit down. Will you have a drink?'
'No, no drink...thank you,' he said, sitting down on the capacious three-seater sofa that she had just vacated. He had always been very polite, something ingrained from childhood, she knew. Now she felt a nervous desire to laugh hysterically, when she sensed that they both really wanted to fall into each other's arms, live for the moment, let tomorrow bring what it would.
'Coffee, then?'
'No. Sit down here, Nell.' He patted the seat next to him. 'If you'll forgive me for inviting you to sit in your own house. Only if you want to.'
When she sat, he put an arm round her shoulders and pulled her against him.
'That's better. You know there's an old saying, something about not letting the sun go down on your anger,' he said. 'Well, the sun has gone down, but it's not the end of the day yet, so I decided to make amends, if I can.'