by Helen Brooks
Sheer molten ecstasy was sending contraction after contraction radiating from the very centre of her being, and as she felt him shudder and then emit a hoarse groan of pleasure, the world shattered into a million brilliant pieces beneath her closed eyelids and she found herself in another dimension, another universe of exquisite fiery sensation.
She wasn’t aware she was crying as she felt him draw shuddering breath after shuddering breath, deep into his lungs, their bodies locked together and her head buried in his shoulder. And then, as she raised her head and looked into his face, she felt the salty hot trail down her face.
‘I love you,’ she whispered shakily, willing him to draw it into himself and accept it completely. ‘More than you will ever know. You are my sun and moon, my reason for living. I’m only half alive when I’m not with you.’
But even as they kissed again, still locked together in an embrace as old and elemental as time, she wondered if he would ever really understand and learn to trust.
Marianne left the bedsit that evening for good, but contrary to what she expected Zeke did not drive to the apartment.
It took her a good twenty minutes to realise where they were heading for, but as they approached Hertfordshire she understood, her hand reaching out to grip Zeke’s as the lump in her throat prevented her from speaking. He was taking her to the house.
‘The apartment’s gone.’ He stopped the car at the top of the common for a moment or two, turning to her as he spoke. ‘The furniture, everything. I thought we needed a new start.’
‘When?’ She was very near breaking point with all the emotion of the last few hours and the realisation that the terrible isolation and loneliness of the last weeks and months was over.
‘I put it on the market the day after I did this,’ he said quietly, gesturing at his ankle. ‘That last misunderstanding between us… It seemed to signify how things had been there. You never liked it, did you?’
‘No,’ she said softly, her eyes glinting with unshed tears. ‘I never did.’
‘It sold in twenty-four hours.’ Zeke was looking straight ahead now, towards the big Victorian whitewashed house that was their new home. ‘Which gave me a few weeks to get things sorted here. Of course you can make any changes you see fit,’ he added as he pressed down on the accelerator.
Marianne sat quite still as the car purred along the road running parallel with the common, and then they were turning through big gates and on to the drive of the house she had fallen in love with all those months ago.
Her heart was thudding in her chest and she felt weak at the knees, although she wasn’t quite sure why. When she had spoken to the Bedlows on her visit in November they had been quite willing to sell any of their beautiful antique furniture Marianne wanted; their house in Portugal was already furnished as it had been their holiday home for the last five years.
She had loved some of the mellow old pieces and had tentatively chosen what she would like to retain, although then, in the back of her mind, she had wondered if they would suit Zeke after the stylish modernness of the apartment.
The first things she saw as she entered the large, sloping-roofed porch were the two white Lloyd Loom chairs and the small cane table, and she turned to Zeke, her eyes shining.
‘Oh, Zeke! You kept these.’
They had been hand in hand, but now he whisked her up into his arms, his eyes tender and his mouth hungry as he kissed her until she was breathless before saying, ‘The Bedlows assured me you liked them. Now, prepare to be carried over the threshold, wench,’ he added smilingly.
‘Mind your ankle!’
He had been limping quite badly—their sexual gymnastics at the bedsit couldn’t have been beneficial to a newly healed bone, and neither could the drive to the house—but from the scathing glance he bestowed on her she wisely decided to say nothing more.
‘Oh, it’s just as I remember,’ she said delightedly.
He had kissed her again before placing her on her feet in the hall, and now, as she gazed at the beautifully carved staircase and mellow wood floor, she felt as though she was dreaming.
This morning she had been counting the pennies to see if she had enough money for the tube as well as some photocopying she needed at the library, and tonight… Tonight she was in paradise.
It was when Zeke opened the door to the drawing room that she knew she was going to cry, in spite of all her efforts to the contrary. The pale green and warm buttery-yellow colour scheme was exactly in line with her sketches, and every piece of furniture she had wanted to keep was there, along with a few new pieces that fitted perfectly.
‘How…?’ She turned to find him watching her very closely, and she wondered how she could ever have thought his grey eyes cold.
‘I just followed your ideas,’ he said softly, ‘but you can change anything you don’t like.’
‘I love it.’ She flung her arms around his neck, suddenly petrified that this was a dream and she would wake up and he would be gone. She held on to him tightly, burying her face in his broad chest as she sought the reassurance of his solidness.
‘We’ll make it work,’ he promised thickly above her head as he sensed her panic. ‘This is a new beginning, my love.’
My love. She pressed even closer, a nameless dread filling her soul for a moment. He called her his love and she believed he meant it, but was he really able to change? Really able to trust her, to believe that she meant to grow old with him, love him, cherish and adore him? He had admitted he wasn’t there yet, and until he was they would never really be happy.
And then she brushed the chill away, resolutely lifting her face for his kiss. She would make him understand, whatever it took. She didn’t think she could go through the last few months again and survive. She needed him just as much as he needed her.
The rest of the house was just as she had envisaged, although apart from the master bedroom the other rooms upstairs were unfurnished as yet, with just the odd piece from the Bedlows dotted about although all the carpets and curtains had been left.
They sat up into the early hours making plans, and then they went to bed, to lie in each other’s arms and love until dawn was breaking over a night-washed sky and the birds were singing in the garden below. Their garden, she thought wonderingly.
Sunday was spent mostly in bed, and Monday morning Zeke called in to the office to say he was taking the day off, but gradually life resumed some sort of normality. Marianne continued at the supermarket for a further few days until Mrs Polinkski’s daughter—who had delayed her departure from Poland several times—returned home, and then she threw herself into furnishing the rest of the house.
Zeke left later in the mornings and returned earlier in the evenings, often mid-afternoon, and one or two evenings Marianne took the bull by the horns and spread out the college and university prospectuses and showed him the courses she was considering.
He was encouraging at those times, but restrained, and when she invited Pat down for the weekend of their third week in Hertfordshire he left them alone on the Saturday, to have a good chin-wag, and then took both girls out to dinner in the evening and behaved impeccably towards Pat, who, albeit reluctantly at first, was won over.
‘You set out to charm her, didn’t you?’ Marianne accused that night as they got ready for bed, her eyes brimming with laughter at the smug expression on his handsome face. ‘You can be a smooth devil when you want to be, Zeke Buchanan.’
‘I don’t deny it.’ He grinned at her, his eyes dancing, and her own smile widened. He seemed lighter these days, freer, and she passionately wanted to believe it would last.
It was all going to be all right, she told herself as she lay beside him later that night, listening to his steady breathing. He was accepting the thought of her studying for a degree now, had actually discussed her choices of university with Pat and herself at dinner, and it had been he who had suggested they go and spend the weekend with her father in a couple of weeks’ time and include Pat again wh
en they went out for dinner.
He had dismissed the apartment and city life without a qualm, and he seemed—he seemed—to enjoy living on the outskirts and being at home more. But how did she know for sure?
She wriggled slightly, angry with herself, but she couldn’t help it. He had told her, the first night at the house, that he had come face to face with himself that lunch-time he had seen her with Wilmer and realised he was poised on the edge of a chasm.
‘You said I’d ruin your life as well as mine if I didn’t get a handle on this thing.’ She had been clasped in his arms and he had moved her slightly to look down into her uplifted face. ‘It was like a bolt of lightning, Marianne, I can’t explain it. In everything that had happened I’d never grasped that before,’ he had admitted soberly.
‘Because you’d never understood how much I love you?’ she had asked gently. ‘Is that why?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps. But the shock of first seeing you with him, the look on his face—I thought for a moment I had lost you. And then you declared your love for me again… It was like a second chance. And then I got angry.’
‘With me?’ she had asked, with careful neutrality.
‘With myself. The problem was mine and yet I was making you shoulder it. It wasn’t fair,’ he’d said with a touch of grimness. ‘None of this has been fair.’
‘Neither was your childhood,’ she’d murmured softly, holding him, loving him so much it hurt.
He’d shrugged, tracing a path round the outline of her soft lips with a tender finger. ‘People endure worse without letting it cripple them,’ he’d said quietly. ‘I sat in the taxi and looked down at my ankle and realised there were worse ways of being crippled than by broken bones. I’d always prided myself on being a fighter, on seeing problems merely as embryo opportunities, so where was that warrior spirit over this?’
They had talked some more, and she had been reassured at the time, but since then little niggling doubts—born of the long months apart and the misery of the last year at the apartment—had crept in much as she had tried to dismiss them.
She wouldn’t allow them any more headroom. She stared fiercely into the darkness, willing the panic and unease to leave. Zeke was too intuitive by half, and if he sensed she was doubting him it could seriously jeopardise this new understanding between them which was still so sweet.
She had told him he had to trust her and the boot was just as relevant on the other foot, too! She wouldn’t think another negative thought. He deserved all her faith for their future.
Nevertheless, it was some time before she fell into a restless slumber, and her dreams were full of nightmarish images and long dark corridors that stretched endlessly into oblivion.
Marianne awoke late the next morning and she lay for some time without moving, in the grip of a deep, all-embracing weariness that seemed a little extreme for the couple of hours’ sleep she had missed. Nevertheless her limbs felt like lead.
It was Saturday morning, and in the distance somewhere she could hear church bells, and the faint murmur of voices downstairs, which she assumed was Zeke and Pat, Zeke’s side of the bed being empty. She really ought to go and join them, she thought tiredly.
She forced herself to sit up, feeling guilty she hadn’t been downstairs when Pat went down, and then felt so horribly ill she thought she was going to faint. She sank back against the pillows before she realised she had to get to the bathroom as a wave of nausea swept over her, but a few minutes later, once she was minus the contents of her stomach, she began to feel a little better and struggled back to bed.
‘Marianne?’ She had just slid under the covers when Zeke walked in the door with a cup of tea in his hand, the smile which had been on his face fading as he took in her ghostly pallor. ‘What’s wrong, darling? Are you ill?’
‘I feel awful.’ It was something of a plaintive wail but she hated being sick. ‘It must be a tummy bug or something.’
Zeke immediately took charge, ordering her to stay in bed and rest and assuring her that he and Pat were quite capable of seeing to the Sunday dinner between them. However, by lunch-time she felt as right as rain, and joined the other two downstairs for a big meal of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and three veg, which she ate with gusto.
The three of them went for walk in the afternoon, calling in at a small oak-beamed thatched pub on the way home, before Pat left for Bridgeton with promises she’d be up to see them again soon.
Marianne slept heavily that night, and was barely awake when Zeke kissed her goodbye in the morning after placing a cup of tea on her bedside cabinet.
Within moments of sitting up in bed she had to run for the bathroom in a repeat of yesterday’s performance, but this time a disturbing possibility had her stomach turning upside down long after the nausea had subsided. But she couldn’t be. Could she?
By mid-morning her suspicions were confirmed after a visit to the local chemist for a pregnancy testing kit. She was trembling as she sat at the kitchen table staring at the little vial, myriad emotions jumbling her thoughts and causing her head to swim. A baby. Zeke’s baby. They had started a new life.
She had put the non-appearance of her monthly cycle after Christmas down to stress, remembering all the other times in the past when she had been two, three, even four weeks late. And then when Zeke had come for her and literally swept her off her feet again she just hadn’t thought of it in all the excitement of furnishing the house. And why should she? All their careful following of charts and such in the last year of their marriage had produced nothing; pregnancy was the last thing—the very last thing—that would have crossed her mind.
But she was pregnant and it was Zeke’s baby growing inside her. Her hand moved protectively to her stomach and she shut her eyes tightly, her mind racing.
How could you be thrilled and scared to death at the same time? she asked herself weakly. A baby was wonderful, the fulfilment of all the dreams and longings she had felt for so long, but it was the wrong time.
She opened her eyes, staring vacantly round the beautiful kitchen as she brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes with a shaking hand.
It was too soon—far, far too soon for Zeke. He had just begun to accept the idea of her going to university and working for a career, of her being with other people and following her own star to a limited extent. This pregnancy would be the end of all that, certainly for a few years at least, and she had never liked the idea of having just one child anyway. Two, or even three, had always been her heart’s desire, and close in ages so they could enjoy each other, as she would have loved to have been able to enjoy the company of a sister or a brother.
This pregnancy would satisfy all the possessive darkness of his strange nature; he wouldn’t be able to resist falling back into his old ways—it was like a gift from the gods. A destructive, self-indulgent gift.
No, no, she couldn’t think of their baby like that. She shook her head, a little moan escaping her white lips. And, whatever, she wanted this baby more than anything in the world. It would mean the world to Zeke; he would be thrilled to bits. It was just that if it had happened a few years from now, when he had really come to terms with his jealousy, it would have been so much better for them. She was frightened, terribly frightened of how their relationship would suffer.
She spent the rest of the day in a state of fermenting unrest. She had been feeling increasingly tired lately, she recognised when she thought about it, almost drained at times. And the non-appearance of the physical signs should have alerted her long before this. But what difference would it have made? She could have insisted they remain apart during her pregnancy, given him more time to conquer his personal demons, she answered herself.
But, no, that wouldn’t have worked, she reasoned in the next moment. She couldn’t have lived apart from him at a time like this, not loving him with all her heart and carrying their child.
But perhaps that sacrifice would have been worth it in the long run if it helped him master the di
strust and fear that had nearly wrecked their marriage and tormented him so? Would she have the strength and determination a few years from now, even possibly a decade or more, to reach out for that career that was becoming more and more distant? Would it mean fighting him again, and this time with a family to consider?
The questions and answers, and counter-questions and answers went on all day, and by the time Zeke arrived home, just as an early dusk was turning the sky pink and gold, she was mentally and physically exhausted.
She had phoned the local surgery that afternoon and booked an appointment with the doctor, but by her own calculations she thought she was eleven weeks pregnant or thereabouts, although she wasn’t absolutely sure of her dates. Ten, eleven, twelve weeks—what did it matter? she asked herself wryly. She was well and truly pregnant, and a week or so was neither here or there.
‘What’s all this?’ She had met Zeke at the door and led him straight into the dining room, where she had set a romantic table with their best crystal and cutlery, two candles already lit and a bowl of fresh flowers perfuming the air. ‘I haven’t missed something, have I? It isn’t your birthday or our anniversary, and I know my birthday was in June.’ He grinned at her, his face open and warm, and she forced herself to smile back.
‘There’s some champagne on ice in the kitchen.’ She was prevaricating, she knew it, but now the moment was here she just didn’t seem able to get the words out. She felt elated and wildly excited on the one hand, and terrified on the other, and added to that distinctly light-headed. In all her agitation she had forgotten to eat lunch.
‘Champagne?’ His grey eyes had narrowed on her flushed face and now there was a touch of wariness in their smoky depths. ‘Do I take it this is a celebration? What have you done?’
‘Not me. Well, not just me,’ she said shakily, her love for him suddenly overwhelming her. He was going to be so pleased and that was all that mattered. He deserved a family; he deserved every bit of love he got after the misery of his childhood, she told herself vehemently. And whatever happened in the future, however difficult things got, she must remember that. And he would be a brilliant, fantastic father.