Roberta Leigh - Too Young To Love

by Roberta Leigh

  She jumped up and began to pace the floor. No, Gavin would never do a thing like that. He had too much integrity to have an affair with the wife of the man for whom he was working. He must have gone to Helen to plead for Mike. Yet this was incredible too. For Mike loved Jane, who was having his child. Sara stopped walking and her skirts swayed around her as she put her hands to her head and tried to see some truth in a situation that was growing ever darker. Who was telling the truth and who was lying? Why should Gavin try to implicate his brother-in-law if it were not the truth? Or was he so determined to marry her that he was willing to make Mike the scapegoat? And what would prompt Mike to go along with such a fabrication? Yet men frequently lied for one another, and if Mike knew it was important for Gavin to make a rich marriage…

  Yes, she thought wearily, Mike could well be induced to pretend that he had been Helen's lover, for he knew Sara would never disclose it to Jane. Tears poured down her cheeks, their flow increasing until her body was racked with sobs. Not since her mother had died had Sara cried with such abandon, for in its own way the loss of Gavin was comparable, bringing with it the end of youth and the knowledge that she had closed a chapter that could never be re-opened.

  Sara lay wakeful as the Embassy settled into sleep. At one o'clock the guests departed, their cars purring away into the night like well-fed jungle cats. She heard Helen speaking and wondered what excuse her stepmother had made for her own absence, for her father had not come in search of her nor sent a servant to see why she had not returned to the ballroom. But she was beyond caring what excuses had been made, too emotionally distraught to spare a thought for anyone's feelings except her own.

  By two o'clock the only sound heard was the sighing of the wind in the trees outside her room and the quick pounding of her heart, each beat saying Gavin's name. Her scene with him lay vivid in front of her eyes, and though she told herself that time would lessen its impact she was only conscious of the agony she was suffering at the moment. How quickly the future could change: one moment a bubble of happiness, the next black and heavy with despair. What a fine line existed between heaven and hell, and how easily one could cross it. She buried her head in her pillow and wept.

  "Wake up, Sara, I want to talk to you."

  Sara's lids fluttered and she frowned.

  "Don't lie there pretending to be asleep," the voice said. "I know very well you're awake."

  Sara stirred as Helen's sharp tones penetrated her consciousness and she struggled into a sitting position and looked at her stepmother standing beside the bed.

  "I want to talk to you about last night," Helen said as Sara's eyes opened.

  "There's nothing more to say," Sara whispered, and remembered she had said exactly the same words to Gavin, who had taken no notice of them, as Helen was doing now.

  "I tried to talk to you last night," her stepmother went on, "but you'd locked your door and I couldn't get in."

  "How did you get in now?"

  "One of the maids has a key." The tall thin figure, soignée in a scarlet housecoat, perched on the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry you overheard my conversation with Gavin lust night."

  "I'm sure you are!"

  "And I want to know what you're going to do about it."

  "Do about it?" echoed Sara.

  "Don't play the innocent with me!" Helen leaned forward. "Are you going to tell your father or not?"

  Sara gave a deep sigh. That was why Helen was there. Not out of compunction for shattering her stepdaughter's dreams or guilt at cuckolding her husband, but for fear that having been found out, she might be forced to give up a life which, though she found it tedious and boring, she was still determined to have.

  'I'm not going to tell my father anything," Sara said slowly. "Not because I care about you but because he - he married you and - and he must still love you."

  "I'm sure he does," Helen said complacently, "but I wasn't sure if you had the good sense to realise it and act accordingly."

  "I'm full of good sense," Sara said bitterly. "That's what they used to call me at school. Sensible Sara!" Her voice broke and she turned her head quickly to hide her tears.

  "There's no need to be tragic about it," Helen muttered. "As long as your father doesn't know the truth, the whole thing will blow over."

  "Just like that," Sara choked. "Aren't you even sorry? Don't you feel any guilt?"

  "No, I don't. So you can stop looking at me with that tight little face of yours 1 What gives you the right to judge me? You know nothing of life. You weren't born with a silver spoon in your mouth - you had a whole canteen of cutlery!"

  "What does that have to do with your being unfaithful?"

  "It has everything to do with it! I know you condemn me for marrying your father without loving him, but that's because you don't know what it's like to be poor."

  "All the more reason for you not to throw away something of value."

  "I'm not planning to throw it away. So far I've been able to have my cake and eat it too."

  "Somebody else's cake!" Sara burst out. "You weren't satisfied with your own!"

  Helen's hard face creased into a mirthless smile. "My own cake wasn't nourishing enough. If you weren't such a child, you'd know that for yourself."

  "You're despicable!"

  Still smiling, Helen stood up. "It's a pity you couldn't have seen your face when you came into my room and saw Gavin. You looked as if your doll had been taken away! Still, he'll come along and pick you up and kiss you better."

  "Do you think I'll let him!" Sara cried, furious that Helen should talk down to her this way. "It would make things easy for you if I did, wouldn't it? There'd be no problem for you in seeing him then."

  For an instant Helen looked astonished, then she regained control of herself. "You're quite spirited behind that docile exterior, Sara. If you could grow up a bit, we might even become friends."

  "I could never be friends with you." Sara almost choked on the words. "The very sight of you revolts me!"

  "You'll have to learn to cope with it."

  "Never. I'm leaving Paris."

  "Don't be foolish. We'll be here another six months."

  "I'm going to London - today."

  "Your father won't let you stay there alone."

  "I'll stay with Aunt Grace." Sara jumped out of bed on the side furthest from Helen. "I told you I wouldn't tell my father about you - about you and Gavin, but I can't stay here and condone it. It's best if I leave."

  Helen frowned. "When are you going?"

  "I've told you. Today."

  "Will you see Gavin before you leave?"

  Despite the studied casualness with which Helen spoke, Sura sensed her tenseness. "I never want to see Gavin again," she affirmed. "He's all yours."

  "You're a silly girl, Sara."

  "Because I despise someone who is dishonest?"

  "Because you set yourself up in judgement over others. No person should do that." Helen put her head on one side, her expression strangely pensive. "It's odd really. Both you and your father are lousy judges of character when it comes to falling in love."

  "Get out!" Sara said raggedly. "Get out before I change my mind and tell my father what you are!"

  "You won't do that," Helen said, and went composedly from the room.

  Sara waited till the door closed, then she went to the wardrobe and started to take out her clothes. Thank goodness she had Aunt Grace. She would stay with her until she had decided what to do with her future. It wouldn't hold Gavin. Of that she was sure. Irrevocably, heart-achingly sure.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Sara paused halfway down Threadneedle Street and debated whether to go back to Mayfair by subway or try to get a taxi. She was still considering this when a taxi stopped in front of her to deposit a fare, and feeling the Fates were smiling at her, she climbed in and gave the driver her address.

  She slipped one foot out of her shoe and slowly rubbed her instep. It had been a long day and she was tired from standing and ta
lking. Still, once she began her new job as interpreter at the United Nations she would be in for a lot more talking and standing. She slipped her shoe on and stared unseeingly through the window, a tall, slender girl with luminous grey eyes that looked too big only because the face in which they were set was too hollowed beneath the cheekbones. The fragility made the face even more beautiful, with its full red mouth and clear peaches-and-cream complexion. The toffee-gold hair of yesteryear was still the same colour, but no longer worn loose. Instead it was smoothed back from the high forehead and waved gently behind pearl-studded ears before being confined in a smooth chignon low on the nape of her graceful neck. Everything about Sara today was a picture of such ethereal sophistication that her father, on the rare occasions when he came to London and saw her, expressed his fear for her well-being. Since the night she had precipitately left Paris he had known that something significant had happened to her, but he respected her privacy too much to question her, though she was sure he guessed that her departure had been due to Gavin. But Sara had refused to talk about it and even when Helen had finally left her father, she still said nothing to him of that fateful night.

  There was no point in re-awakening painful memories if they could never be replaced by happier ones, and for this reason she followed the British axiom of letting sleeping dogs lie. The trouble was that occasionally the dogs stirred - as they were doing now - re-awakening her to the pains of her first love.

  Her first and only love. In the four years that had elapsed since she had last seen Gavin, no other man had meant anything to her. Sometimes she wondered if any man ever would. Perhaps the emotion he had aroused in her had been only romantic illusion.

  "Is it all right if I stop at the corner?" the cab driver broke into her thoughts. "It's a one-way street and otherwise - "

  "It's fine for you to leave me here," she smiled, and paying him, walked the ten yards to the block where she lived.

  Her apartment was on the top floor and was as elegant as Sara herself, and equally soulless, she thought ruefully, as she took off the jacket of her expensive suit and pressed her fingers against temples that were beginning to ache. A drink was called for to wash away her self-pity. She turned to the decanter and saw the pile of letters that her daily maid had left for her on the table. The top one was franked "Balinda", where Aunt Grace was living. It was the first letter she had received since her father had flown there a month ago, and she hoped it contained the news she had wanted to hear ever since he and Helen had separated two years ago.

  "I'm going out to ask Grace if she'll marry me when I'm free," her father had told her the night before he left London. "Logically I should wait until my divorce, but if Helen remains adamant about not giving me one, I'll have to wait five years before I can get it myself, and I'm determined not to let Grace go out of my life again."

  Sara had come closer than at any time to telling him the truth about Gavin and Helen, and only the knowledge that he could not use this to get his freedom had kept her quiet. However, it had prompted her to suggest he have Helen watched.

  "That's such a sordid thing to do," her father had protested.

  "Divorce usually is sordid. Anyway, if it would help you get your freedom…"

  "You're right," he said. "If Grace agrees to marry me I'll engage a detective agency to watch Helen."

  Only then had Sara casually asked for news of the Embassy staff.

  "Why not come over to Paris and see them for yourself?" her father had suggested. "I didn't expect you to come when Helen was living with me - I know you never liked her - but she's been gone a long time and you still haven't been to stay."

  "I see you in London instead," Sara pointed out.

  "That's not the same." He had looked thoughtful. "When I come back from the South Seas we must have a little chat. You're my only child, Sara, and it's time you presented me with some grandchildren."

  "Wouldn't you like me to present you with a husband first?" she had laughed.

  "Anyone in mind?"

  She shook her head. "I must be hard to please."

  "Not still carrying the torch for Gavin?" It was nearly four years since her father had mentioned him, and he had only done so because Gavin had asked to be relieved of his pott.

  "I hardly remember him," she lied, "though I do remember his sister Jane."

  It had been a clever answer, for it fooled her father into ihinking she was speaking the truth, and he had gone on to talk of Jane and Mike and their delightful twins.

  "Mike has been posted to Nairobi," he had concluded, "and doing extremely well there."

  "And Gavin?" Sara had said carefully, knowing that unless she forced herself to refer to him a doubt would always remain in her father's mind.

  "Doing extremely well. One day he'll end up in Washington."

  "He always was ambitious," she murmured, and knew her reply caused her father to give her an unusually penetrating glance, but he changed the subject and did not refer to Gavin again.

  Sometimes she regretted not knowing where he was or what he was doing, and she wished she knew if he was seeing Helen again, now that her marriage was over.

  The letter she was holding slipped from her hand and she bent to pick it up, anxious to stop thinking of the past. But the contents of the letter kept it alive in her mind, for it was this same past that was making Aunt Grace hesitate about accepting Sir William's proposal.

  "He says Helen no longer means anything to him, but I'm not sure if I believe him. I was very distressed when he married Helen and it took me a long while to make another life for myself. But I have made a life now and I'm reluctant to disrupt it unless I can be sure I'm doing the right thing. I would like to talk things over with you, Sara. Your father says you're taking a holiday before going to your new position, and I hope you'll come out to Balinda and see me.

  Sara put down the letter and knew she had to go and see Grace. Only some blunt truths about the sort of person Helen was would convince Grace she had nothing to fear from her. She went to her desk and leafed through her diary. She had six weeks free before going to New York, and this would give her ample time to fly to Balinda for a holiday. It was not a place she would normally choose, for in the last four years she had shunned quietude and spent her leisure in as much activity as possible. But for the moment her own inclinations were unimportant. Her father's happiness was at stake and she must do all she could to help him. If only he had married Grace in the beginning I Then Gavin would never have met Helen and her own life would not be in ruins. She frowned and shook her head. It was as well she had discovered the sort of man he was. It would have been far worse to have married him and then found out.

  With a sigh she picked up Grace's letter. She must stop thinking of Gavin. It was four years since she had seen him and he had probably changed as much as she had. He might even be married with a family. She must start to think of marriage too and not regard her career as the be-all and end-all of her existence.

  Picking up the telephone, she dialled British Airways to book a flight to Balinda.

  Sara made herself more comfortable on the bamboo chair and looked out from the terrace to the wide curving beach that lay beyond the lush green garden. The island was far prettier than she had imagined it would be, with a bustling town and harbour and a small but sophisticated colony of English, French and Australians.

  "Soon there'll be Americans too," Grace Rickards had said as she had driven Sara from the airport and pointed out the bright new hotel bordering the north shore. "That's the first of the Graham Hotel chain. They're putting up another one on the other side of the island too."

  "So much for your quiet life," Sara had laughed. "You'll have to go and live in Paris if you want a bit of solitude!"

  Sara thought of this as Grace came out from the living- room and settled herself on a nearby chair. She was in her late forties, as tall as Sara though not so slim, with grey- flecked hair and a serious face unmarked by lines. She supplemented a small private income
by writing cookery hooks and in the last few years had achieved a notable success. It was this that Sara spoke about in the hope that it would lead to a more intimate discussion of the future.

  "How do you test all your recipes living on this island? Your last book, if I remember rightly, was called "Breakfasts Round the World."

  "I do take trips away from here," came the smiling answer. "This year I've already spent a week in New York, a week in Sydney and ten days in Japan, promoting one of my books."

  "No wonder you're not sure you want to marry my father!"

  "You know that isn't the reason."

  "Yes," Sara murmured. "That's why I came here. He does love you, you know. Helen means nothing to him."

  "He married her," said Grace dryly.

  "That might have been your fault," Sara said candidly. "You never gave him any encouragement."

  "How could I? I lived in his house and I was taking care of you!"

  "Then you can't blame him for being put off by your attitude," Sara gave a sly smile. "Wouldn't you like to have me as a daughter?"

  "I think of you as one already. Which reminds me, are you single because you've never fallen in love, or have you become a career girl?"

  "I'll get married when I meet the right man. That's why I'm going to New York," Sara fibbed. "I should get a super choice there."

  "Dreary politicians and statisticians I Surely you can do better than that? We have a new and handsome Governor on Balinda," Grace Rickards continued casually. "I thought your father might have mentioned it when he dined with you."

  "He was too busy talking about you. Anyway, I'm not interested in being a diplomat's wife. It isn't my idea of fun."

  "Yet you're advocating it for me!"

  "That's different," Sara said hastily.