Arian

by Iris Gower

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Calvin Temple sat in the garden staring out over the curving sweep of the bay far below him. The scent of roses was all around him and the sun was warm on his face. He should feel on top of the world, he told himself. He had everything; a fine home, an easy life-style and most of all, he had a new mistress.

  Ellie was sweetness itself; golden of hair, soft of nature and passionate in the bedchamber. She was a pale imitation of Arian Smale and Calvin knew it.

  Arian. A success now, her newspaper flourishing. Everyone, including Ellie, was avidly reading the new feature pages within the Swansea Times, an innovation by anyone’s standards and guaranteed to make the paper more popular than ever.

  Calvin recognized Arian’s hand in the leader articles in the women’s pages; these were always well constructed and full of controversy. He saw none of her in the gimmicky pieces on cooking and budgeting the household expenses, those were things that would not interest Arian in the least.

  Ellie now, she read them with delight, sitting in the apartment he’d bought for her. She even ventured to try some of the recipes, much to her cook’s chagrin. Ellie was cut out to be a wife, a homely girl who wanted a husband and a brood of children around her skirts. He’d toyed with the idea of marrying her, of course he had. He needed heirs but he always balked at the asking. More than anything he needed the spice that Arian alone brought into his life and he might as well face the fact that it was Arian he loved and longed to spend the rest of his days with.

  He knew of her husband’s sickness, something wrong with the man’s mind apparently. He’d heard about it with a sense of dismay; he knew Arian, she had too much conscience to abdicate responsibility for her husband and he wouldn’t put it past her to take the man back in spite of everything.

  If Calvin hated anyone, it was Gerald Simples. Simples had tricked Arian into marriage, he had stolen Calvin’s money and had got away with it scot-free. Revenge when it came, would be sweet indeed.

  Bella came into the garden and bobbed a curtsy. ‘A lady here to see you, sir.’ He caught a glimpse of the curiosity in the maid’s face before she stepped aside and allowed Ellie to enter the garden. She stood before him with a hangdog expression on her face.

  ‘I’ve got to talk to you, Calvin, love.’ She spoke softly, her Welsh accent lilting and delicate, her voice was one of the things about Ellie that most pleased him.

  He met her eyes and warning bells rang in his mind. Ellie looked pale, strained even. She had never come to his house unasked and he wondered if she had found another lover, a man who wanted to marry her.

  He was surprised by the feeling of relief that swept through him at the thought. He knew, quite suddenly, that after an initial sense of pique, he would not be too worried if Ellie were to leave him.

  ‘That will be all, Bella.’ He waited for the maid to leave.

  ‘Go on, then Ellie,’ he encouraged, ‘spit it out, I won’t bite.’ He patted the wrought iron seat but she remained standing like a small girl about to be rebuked.

  ‘I’m with child.’ The words fell into the silence, softly spoken words, almost an apology in themselves. Calvin became aware of the singing of the birds, the rustling of the leaves in the tree, as his mind, for an instant, refused to accept what Ellie was saying.

  She had begun to weep softly, her head down, her hands hanging to her sides. He rose and took her in his arms and patted her awkwardly. Guilt seared him. He hadn’t expected this. But why hadn’t he? It was the thing women did best, getting with child, usually in order to trap a man into marriage.

  Immediately, he dismissed the thought as unworthy. No, not Ellie, she wouldn’t even think of trapping him. She was innocent, a lovely girl with not one ounce of guile in her make-up.

  He drew her towards the garden seat and took her on his knee and smoothed the hair from her face. ‘It isn’t your fault, Ellie,’ he said softly, soothingly. ‘It isn’t anyone’s fault. These things happen.’

  He was suddenly calm. After the initial shock, his first thought had been to offer marriage but he had been down that road before with Eline and would not take that path again.

  ‘What am I to do?’ Ellie asked in a whisper. ‘You won’t want me. I’ll grow fat and ugly and you’ll hate me for what has happened.’

  ‘Of course I won’t hate you,’ Calvin reassured her. ‘I’ll take care of you, always. I promise you that.’

  ‘But you don’t want to marry me.’ Ellie had said the words that were in his mind and Calvin felt his defences rising.

  ‘No,’ he said as gently as he could, ‘I have been married. I don’t want to marry again, Ellie, you always knew that.’

  ‘I know.’ She turned away as though afraid for him to see her face. ‘But you’ll still let me live with you?’ She was pleading.

  ‘Of course I’ll let you live with me,’ he said. ‘We have our own little love nest, our apartment in town, don’t we?’ He was avoiding the issue. She wanted to live with him, not in the apartment but here, in his own house.

  ‘I’ll get a nurse for you, you won’t ever be alone, I promise you.’ He was promising a great deal and yet nothing at all and they both knew it.

  Ellie turned and clung to him, he could feel her hot tears against his neck. He felt his being melt but it was with pity not love. He held her close and kissed her hair but his mind was working on practical matters. He would set up a trust for the child when it came. If it should be a son, he would adopt him as his legitimate heir.

  Excitement filled him; he was to be a father at last. Ellie had been nothing if not faithful to him. She was the truthful kind who would have broken off the relationship at once if someone else had come along. Not like Eline. He pushed away the bitter thoughts of the son she’d borne, the son he’d believed for a short time had been his.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he soothed, ‘let me give you some money and you can choose some baby things. That will make you happy, won’t it?’

  She put her hand on his face then and kissed his lips. ‘If it makes you happy, there’s nothing more to be said.’

  He watched as she rose to her feet and moved slowly, gracefully away from him. In that moment, he realized how he’d always treated Ellie as a child. In reality, she was a woman with an insight he’d never given her credit for.

  ‘You’re going home?’ He hated himself for the feeling of relief that filled him. ‘My carriage will take you, I’ll call the groom.’

  After she’d gone, he moved restlessly from his seat. He would walk into town, take a stroll past the offices of the Swansea Times. It was possible, just possible that he might catch a glimpse of Arian. Why he should think of her now, he couldn’t understand. Unless he wanted to say goodbye to her, finally.

  Gerald was growing cunning. He knew now when the bout of temper was going to come upon him. He felt the stirrings as though a rage at all the world was about to take him over and suffocate him. It was then he would take a dose of the laudanum that he had secreted away in the drawer beside the bed he shared with Sarah.

  The laudanum always helped. He knew it would bring on a calmness akin to sleep, he would dream away the hours for God knows how long and then, he would wake and the rage would have passed.

  Dr Carpenter had been pushy enough to track him down, to call on him at the Frogmore residence. He’d been puzzled by Gerald’s apparent cure. He’d thought Gerald ready for the mad house and here he was, apparently confounding all the doctors’ learned theories.

  The trouble was, Gerald thought wryly, that he was beginning to crave the laudanum even when the bouts weren’t threatening but he could control that, just as he had controlled everything in his life, including the women.

  Especially the women. Even now, he lay in an hotel room waiting for a beautiful girl, the seventeen-year-old daughter of Eddie Carpenter, the doctor. That was rich and Gerald stretched and smiled to himself.

  Candida Carpenter was the one who supplied him with laudanum in return for vows
of true love and marriage one day in the future.

  She was sweet and gullible and very passionate beneath the sheets. Having another woman was a situation which suited Gerald admirably, for Candida had a splendid young body, an eager young libido. In addition, she believed herself to be very modern and felt, with a growing number of other women, that equality was the name of the game between a man and a woman.

  Candida was training to be a nurse because of a whim. She was from the privileged classes and her duties were inordinately light; her father, after all was a well-to-do doctor who adored his first-born child. So, well placed to open the right doors, Candida would doubtless make it to the top of her profession, if she stuck it that long.

  He heard the knock on his door and sat up, a knowing smile on his face. It was growing dark outside and this was the time of day that Candida visited him after she’d come off shift in the hospital. They had a regular arrangement, one paid for by the generosity of Sarah Frogmore, if she but knew it.

  She slipped into the room, her starched apron rustling and Gerald imagined Candida, so pristine in her uniform and yet with the black stockings hidden seductively beneath the fresh linen.

  He pretended sleep and heard her come to the bed. She leant over him and brushed his mouth with hers. He felt her breasts against his arm and resisted the temptation to reach up with his mouth.

  ‘Time for your blanket bath, sir.’ Candida was nothing if not predictable. ‘Let’s see how your muscles are working tonight.’ She drew back the bed-clothes. ‘Oh, very good.’

  He opened his eyes to see her divest herself slowly of her uniform, hanging the clothes over a chair, careful not to crease them. When she was naked, she came to him and climbed astride him.

  ‘You look tired tonight, darling.’ She smiled, her small white teeth pearly in the dim light. ‘I think I will have to administer to your needs. We must look after you, mustn’t we?’

  Gerald suppressed a sigh, he wished she’d shut up, she was not a conversationalist. Then he gasped. She had stopped talking and was doing what she was best at and he gave himself up to what he knew was going to be an hour of sheer delight.

  Later, when he was alone, Gerald relaxed into a comfortable sense of well being. In his possession was a fresh supply of laudanum. Perhaps, he thought, he should take some before he faced the ordeal of going home to Sarah.

  She imagined he’d been out shopping, stopping at some public bar on the way home. She would question him about which shops he’d been to and what he’d bought, who he had drunk with, but then he’d always been adept at lying.

  There was just one worry that tugged at the corners of his mind. What if Sarah should find out about Candida? He didn’t want to lose the money she heaped upon him. On the other hand, he meant to hold onto Candida, too. She was his means of obtaining the laudanum he needed so badly.

  He would have to be very careful with both his ladies. Candida accepted that he had a wife, but a mistress she would never tolerate. If she even so much as guessed at the situation, he would never see her again, for Candida had a very great sense of self-preservation.

  He took some of the precious laudanum and lay back, his senses sated. He felt exultant. In time, everything would fall into his lap. A little patience, that’s all he needed. His blood quickened. He was making his plans soon, very soon now, and then he would seek out Arian, his wife.

  ‘When are we going to have this great civic “do”, business, then?’ Mac as always was surly and Arian suppressed a smile.

  ‘I don’t know the exact date but you should be happy that the city fathers are honouring our newspaper with a supper at the Guildhall. It’s some achievement to be the highest selling daily in South Wales.’

  ‘Dunno about that,’ Mac picked up his pen. ‘There’s other papers just as good. Better, in fact.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ Arian felt it polite to agree with Mac, as he hated any show of pride, ‘but none have such a fine writer as you on the staff.’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense.’ The words were harsh but none the less, Mac was pleased, that much was evident by the colour that flooded up his neck to his ears.

  ‘Duw, I don’t believe it,’ Arian teased, ‘the hard-bitten reporter is actually blushing.’

  ‘I am not.’ Mac didn’t look at her but bent his head lower over the page on which he was writing. ‘Go away, I have work to do even if you haven’t.’

  Arian had no work, at any rate nothing she wanted to get on with right now. Right now she needed a walk in the fresh air, needed to get out of the aura of ink and pencil sharpenings and raise her head from work once in a while, if only to stay sane.

  Sane. The word brought to mind unwelcome thoughts of Gerald. She had caught sight of him leaving an hotel yesterday evening. He appeared slightly dazed and she’d hidden in a doorway, feeling foolish but praying he wouldn’t see her.

  He was well dressed and prosperous looking, no doubt courtesy of the gullible Sarah. He could charm any woman he chose, any woman except his wife. Perhaps it was this that had made him want her so much, the fact that Arian alone saw him as he was.

  ‘I’m going out.’ She put on her coat.

  ‘I’m relieved to hear it.’ Mac glared up at her. I’ll be able to get some real work done in peace.’

  ‘And I will have a rest from your moaning.’ Arian moved to the door. It was all banter. She would never manage without Mac, and in any case, she really was very fond of him.

  It was good to be outdoors. The sun was warm and the breeze coming in from the sea was scented with salt. It was a day when Arian felt, almost, that she was a young girl again. But she wasn’t so young now, she would never see twenty-five again.

  Her life had been eventful. She had known men, not all of them kind. She was married to a man whom she had never loved, tied to him for the rest of her life. It was a sombre thought.

  But, at least in one thing she had made her mark, she was a newspaper proprietor and one on whom the city fathers were about to bestow a singular honour. She should feel proud. Why then, did she feel empty and unsatisfied?

  ‘You look as downhearted as I feel.’ The voice was one she recognized at once and Arian felt her senses quicken. She glanced up to see Calvin Temple, his eyes holding hers were without laughter. She made to move away.

  ‘Don’t go, Arian,’ he spoke softly. ‘Talk to me, just talk. That’s all I ask.’

  ‘All right.’ Arian followed him as he led the way along the street in the direction of the bay. They walked for some minutes in silence, finally facing the sea as the long arm of the pier came into sight.

  ‘I’m not happy, Arian.’ He began without preliminary as they stood beneath the struts of the pier, the sand soft beneath their feet. ‘I don’t think I’ll every be really happy, not without you.’

  He held up his hand. ‘I know it’s impossible. You’re married, you’ve told me that a hundred times, but it doesn’t stop me wanting you.’

  ‘Doesn’t stop you having a new mistress, either, does it?’ There was not much about the doings of the privileged classes that Arian didn’t know thanks to the diligence of her reporters.

  Calvin looked at her quickly. ‘Add this to what the gossips tell you, Ellie’s having my child.’ He sounded proud and Arian felt a bite of jealousy.

  ‘You’ll marry her?’ It was a question that she had no right to ask and yet she wasn’t surprised when he answered.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You don’t love her.’ This was a statement. It was clear that he didn’t love the girl, not enough anyway, otherwise he wouldn’t be talking to Arian this way.

  ‘I’ll take care of her, of course,’ he avoided the question. ‘I’ll make sure that she never wants for anything.’ He looked levelly at Arian. ‘Ellie is a nice girl, looks a bit like you. A substitute, I recognize that.’

  Arian was absurdly pleased though she had no right to be. ‘If I was good, and generous, I’d wish you every happiness with this Ellie, I would wish for you to fall
in love with her.’

  ‘But that’s not what you want, is it, Arian?’

  ‘I can’t say it is.’

  ‘And you still won’t come to live with me, even though you’d be everything in the world to me, my wife in every way possible.’

  Arian smiled ruefully. ‘Except in law. I couldn’t do it, Calvin. I think my wild ways are gone now I’m getting older. You see, I’m settling into a routine, I’m compromising with life, isn’t that what it’s all about? It’s what we all seem to do in the end, even you with your Ellie.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Calvin fell silent, he stared at the sea receding now, moving insidiously away from the shore. Arian watched him covertly. She loved him, she wanted him physically, wanted to be in his arms, to know him intimately as a woman should know the man she loved. She’d had so little of him and yet he was scarcely far from her thoughts.

  He felt her gaze and turned to look at her. Slowly, he leaned forward and carefully pressed his mouth against hers. She felt that this was a goodbye, perhaps a last goodbye and she wanted to cry.

  ‘I must go.’ His voice was brisk. ‘Come along, let me walk you back to the highway.’

  It was far too short a walk. Soon, they reached the bottom of the Strand and after a moment, Calvin turned on his heel and walked briskly away from her. Arian watched until he was out of sight and then she made her way slowly towards the press, it was better than going home to an empty house.

  Mac was obviously in a bad mood. He looked red in the face and there was a streak of ink across his cheek. Arian wanted to hug him; he was so dear, so ordinary, so reliable in spite of his eccentric ways.

  ‘There’s trouble.’ There was no preliminary, just like Mac to get right to the heart of the matter. ‘Seems that some rich bitch is suing us.’

  Arian was not alarmed. ‘How can that be?’ She shrugged off her coat, aware that there was sand in her shoes. She kicked them off impatiently. ‘We haven’t written anything defamatory, have we?’