by Неизвестный
It was from Louise. She was asking Adam to vet the cover of the Order of Service—for their wedding. The phone rang loudly, startling Trish so much that she jumped. Trembling, she picked it up. ‘Yes?’ she said in a tight little voice.
‘This is Louise. I'm checking that Adam’s got my faxoh, and that he’s picking up the wedding invitations and colour charts and fabrics for our new house.’
Trish sat down heavily on his bed, all the air expelled from her lungs. She licked her dry lips and tried to control her voice but it came out croakily, nevertheless. ‘You—you and Adam are...getting married? she jerked out.
‘Well, you knew that! You came to our engagement party!’ declared Louise.
‘I thought you’d split up!’ Trish gasped.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Louise said coldly. ‘Adam and I have just spent some wonderful weeks together!’
Struck dumb by that, Trish dropped the phone back on the cradle, staring at it sightlessly. Several minutes went by until she felt able to move. With limbs as heavy as lead, she got up and tore off the fax, reading it again, her trembling lips moving silently as she prayed for a miracle, for the words to be transformed into something different. Darling, what do you think of this? Wedding bells!
Divine, aren’t they? Give me the OK and I’ll go ahead. Adored Paris—you rascal! Can’t wait till you come back. Thanks for the roses. Thirty! Deliciously extravagant!
Adore you... Louise. XXX.
Her eyes closed in pain. He had deceived her. Oh, she couldn’t bear it, this joy and sorrow, soaring to the heights of happiness and the depths of despair! Better to know nothing but ordinary, plodding things than to experience such agonising see—saw emotions!
She sat there trembling, steeling her heart to him, peeling away the layers of love and affection he’d so unjustifiably earned. Maybe he had been fooling around with Lucy! she thought. She wouldn’t put it past him now!
As for telling him her news... No! Not ever! she vowed; he didn’t deserve to know. She didn’t want a man like him having anything to do with her baby! She became all choked up, mourning the man she’d thought he was, feeling only contempt for the shallow, pleasure-seeking person he’d hidden from her all this time.
Carefully, she folded the fax and slipped it into her jeans pocket. At some stage she would confront him with it. Perhaps even lead him up the garden path for a while, then, when he was in the middle of some out-and-out lie, she could calmly produce the fax and ask him very sweetly to give her the address of the house he and Louise were doing up, so that she could send a house-warming card. When he returned, she was unnaturally calm and looked up from polishing the sitting—room bookcase with a smile of enquiry on her face.
‘Nothing there,’ he said with a puzzled frown. ‘No parcels, nothing.’
‘How odd,’ she marvelled caustically, thanking fate for the mix—up. If he hadn’t been called away she might never have known he was still engaged!
‘Annoying to have been interrupted.' he murmured, heading for her.
Then she heard something that alerted all her senses, a sound which she’d been unconsciously listening out for. And it stopped her dead in her tracks.
‘Adam!’ she breathed, forgetting everything in her panic.
‘I think Gran’s fallen!’
Without waiting to see if he followed, she sped towards her grandmother's cottage, hearing Adam close behind her. They both exchanged startled glances when a terrible, guttural cry rang out.
‘What’s that?’ he cried in horror.
‘Lucy! Trying to call for help. Something’s badly wrong!’ she wailed.
He accelerated, Lucy’s desperate gargle becoming more frantic. In a moment he had overtaken Trish, his long, loping strides quickly covering the distance to the open doorway. When she arrived a moment later, wide—eyed and breathless, it was to see Adam crouching by her grandmother, who was lying awkwardly on the slate floor of the kitchen. Lucy was cradling the old woman’s head in her lap and he seemed to be gently but urgently persuading her grandmother to cautiously test out the movement in her limbs.
‘Oh, Gran-Gran, darling!’ cried Trish, sinking to the ground and taking one swollen—knuckled hand in hers, everything forgotten but her concern.
‘I’m all right. Stop fussing, you lot!’ grumbled her grandmother. ‘Ouch! That’s my arm you’re making free with, young man! Go and play with one of your own!’
But, although her words were jaunty, the shake in her voice and the whiteness of her face told another story. Trish leapt up and grabbed the shock remedies from her first-aid box. .
‘Open,’ she ordered, hiding her own distress and releasing a couple of drops onto her grandmother’s tongue.
‘I think there’s probably a break in that arm,’ Adam said quietly. ‘She ought to be checked over—’
‘They don’t do anything for fractures nowadays,’ muttered the old woman. ‘We might as well rely on the good old-fashioned methods.'
'That’ll be Symphytum. Knitbone,' explained Trish, seer ing Adam’s frown.
His brows drew harder together as if he disapproved. She remembered Stephen’s scorn when she’d dosed herself with the age—old Ignatia remedy for grief, just before Christine’s funeral. Now Adam was proudly supporting his son’s career in conventional medicine. He’d probably think she was weird too. It was another example of the gulf that existed between her way of life and Adam’s. They were a lifestyle apart.
‘Just get me to a chair,’ said her grandmother. ‘It’s my own fault. I was wearing my hat and I didn’t see that I’d dropped some strawberries on the floor. I slipped.' Her eyelids drooped.
‘Don’t go to sleep!’ said Adam sharply, his hand quickly feeling through the white curls. He exchanged glances with Trish and mouthed, ‘Bruise.’
Trish kissed her grandmothefs wrinkled cheek ‘Hospital for you, like it or not,’ she said perkily. ‘Handsome doctors with cold hands, attentive nurses with enemas—you’ll love it, you know you will!’ She saw the glimmer of a smile on the worryingly pale mouth, administered the shook remedies again and then checked her watch, uttering a groan of dismay. ‘No boat!’
Adam’s mouth thinned in suppressed exasperation. ‘Now what do we do?’ he asked, scowling at her.
‘I’ll have to ring Joe Slater. He’s the neighbouring farmer,’ she explained as she rose and started dialling.
‘He’s got a small launch in Stinking Porth, the next bay. He’ll take us to St Mary’s.’
‘Right. Lucy,’ Adam said urgently, taking control again,
‘find some blankets for Mrs Hicks. Then go next door and get my thick jacket from my room, and something for Trish to wear. It’ll be cold on the water when we come back. We’ll both go to the hospital. Can you manage dinner for Mrs Varsher tonight on your own?’
Lucy nodded and Adam eased the old woman’s head into the solid warmth of his chest. Trish finished explaining the situation to Joe and knelt beside her grandmother again, alert for any hint of concussion.
‘He’ll prepare the boat immediately,' she said shakily. Her eyes took in Adam’s white face. The hospital, she thought at once. It must be bringing back memories of the hospice. Despite her anger with him, sympathy flooded her heart. ‘Look...you don’t have to come, Adam—’
‘I do.’ Their eyes met over her grandmothefs head. He managed a crooked smile. ‘Someone has to carry your grandmother to the boat——and from it, if need be. And it could be late before you return. I might be needed on the return journey.’ He touched her hand,.caught it in his and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Her eyes were dark and pained as she drew her hand away. He seemed so tender! she thought miserably. ‘She’ll be all right. Don’t worry,’ he said consolingly.
‘Don’t mind me!’ muttered Trish’s grandmother. ‘Do your courting over my head while I try to die quietly and not bother you!’ But she was smiling, Trish could see, even through her own tear-filled eyes.
‘Die
quietly? Huh! We should be so lucky!’ Adam drawled, with a teasing grin.
‘Rascal!’ muttered the old woman, giving him an approving pat. Adam knew that, since he was a stranger to the dangerous waters around the Scillies, he couldn’t pilot the launch himself despite his skill at handling boats. Instead, he made it his job to cradle the uncomplaining Mrs Hicks securely against his body for the long journey to St Mary’s. Somehow both he and Trish managed to keep her conscious with a teasing repartee that had even the reserved Joe smiling. The tide was low and Joe pronounced Tresco Flats virtually impassable, so they went the long way, around Samson island. Adam vowed to buy a nautical chart and learn the waters. He didn’t intend to stay an ignorant city man for long. It wasn’t in his nature to feel as helpless in an emergency as he had with this one.
Throughout the journey he noticed a cold rigidity about Trish, and a heartbreaking tremble of her lower lip. She tried to control it for her grandmother’s sake, making little jokes about doctors and nurses till he yearned to gather her up and hold her tightly in his arms.
Why? he raged silently. Why even consider involving himself with someone who was so deeply passionate, so open and defenceless that she could get hurt? And thus hurt him, remind him of the agonies he’d gone through".
'Adam.’
He focused on her. She seemed to be a blur. He couldn’t speak. So he lifted an eyebrow enquiringly.
‘ Do you have your mobile phone with you?’ she asked anxiously. ‘We could ring ahead. I know the number.'
Curtly, he nodded and handed it to her. He knew he was afraid of her concem, her unbounded ability to love, feel compassion, pain. Perhaps she was the one with the greatest courage.
His pulses quickened as they came closer to the hospital. If he’d had any choice he would have excused himself and waited in the boat. But he was needed. A hospital car met them on the quay. Flashbacks kept springing into his head. Sam. Moaning. His own voice yelling. Sam’s face. God!
Sam’s face...
‘Are you all right?’ came Trish’s soft, low voice. A dumb nod with a grimace. Then a swallow to clear his throat of the choking ball that blocked it. ‘Headache,’
he lied hoarsely.
After a moment’s hesitation, she stroked his forehead, massaging his temples with her cool, gentle fingers. Then she pressed her thumbs hard beneath the bones at the base of his skull. He concentrated his mind on what she was doing and the images faded.
It was getting worse. Trish was opening him up to things best left forgotten. He couldn’t live without her...yet he feared to live with her. Her lack of faith in him had been unexpected—it was as if she knew that he wasn’t being entirely honest with her about Lucy.
Perhaps her grandmother was wrong about Trish’s feelings. He wanted Trish so much that he might be into wishfulfilment here and that was blinding him to the truth. He went pale, thinking how appalled he’d been at Mrs Hicks’s heavy hint on the phone that Trish might be pregnant. At least that seemed unlikely. If she was wrong about that, she could be wrong about everything.
He ought to walk away. Leave his emotions intact. The uncertainty, this to-ing and fro-ing of uninhibited abandon and total rejection, was wrecking his smooth, ordered life. He tipped his head back, closing his eyes, knowing he craved her like an addict. He must convince her that he cared because he couldn’t go on like this much longer, desperately finding ways to subdue his hunger for her.
‘We’re here.’
Touched by Trish’s croaky little voice, he squeezed her hand. ‘Everything will be OK now,’ he said, wishing she weren’t drawing away from him as if he’d burned her with a branding iron.
Being worried about Trish took his mind off being in a hospital again. Her grandmother was taken immediately for X—rays and they were left to cool their heels in the hospital corridor, clutching paper cups of a liquid which claimed to be tea.
‘Think I’ll go and see my mate Bill,’ Joe muttered, evidently ill at ease in his surroundings. ‘Give him a jerk up. Farm lease is for sale,’ he added, seeing Adam’s puzzled expression.
‘Yes. Trish mentioned it,’ he said politely. ‘I gather it belongs to the Duchy of Cornwall.'
‘Whole of Scilly is Duchy land. Belonged to all the heirs to the throne since the first Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, in 1337,’ Joe said proudly. ‘Bill’s supposed to have two people interested. Give us a call when you’re ready to go back. It’s only across the beach.' Joe recited the number and Adam wrote it on a card in his wallet. Waiting dispiritedly on the chair he’d found for her, Trish looked exhausted, her mouth drooping with distress. His heart lurched with affection and he sat next to her, his arm coming comfortingly around her shoulders.
‘Don’t,’ she muttered, shrugging it away. ‘I can’t cope with that.’
‘I want to look after you,’ he said gently. ‘At this precise moment, I want to wrap you up in cotton wool—to protect you from any harm, anything sad or bad or mad!’
She turned, her beautiful eyes soft with worry. Seeing she would be too weary to resist, he kissed her, cheek, marvelling at its texture, aching to hold her very, very tightly and build a wall around her so she would never know what it was to be hurt.
‘It would be difficult to get my storm coat on,’ she observed, her voice still quite shaky. He sat close to her and could feel the trembling throughout her body. ‘And having a shower would be a n-nightm-m... ’
Tears were coursing down her face. Pain seared through his heart. His brother had cried like this. Adam let the pain roll through him. He’d been helpless then as well. Emotion prevented him from speaking. He just reached out and held her, stroking her hair in silent agony, grateful that she let him.
He was beginning to care too deeply. It was unbearable seeing Trish so unhappy. ‘Don’t cry,’ he muttered hoarsely, only just stopping himself from stuttering. Cursing himself, he got a grip and blanked out that night he’d held Sam like this, while the tears had coursed down his own face and mingled with his brother’s. ‘Don’t worry,’ he soothed in Trish’s small ear. ‘It’ll be all right.'
‘I love her so much!’ she sobbed into his shoulder, her muffled voice wrenching at his heart. ‘She’s been wonderful to me! You see why I worry about her-——she will dance about in those sloppy slippers of hers and forget she’s none too safe on her pins. And she would wear that hat!’ she wailed, as if that were her fault. ‘Gran’s all I’ve got-’
‘No,’ he said gently. ‘You have me too. You will have me for as long as you want me.’
Trish raised a tear-stained face. He smiled at her and wiped the damp streaks with his handkerchief. From the way she was looking at him——puzzled, confused, stunned and disbelieving—it seemed that she hadn’t taken on board what he’d been trying to tell her.
‘No. You don’t! You-'
‘Leave it for now,’ he advised, easing her back into his arms and drawing her resisting head to his shoulder, persisting till she gave in and slumped heavily against him. He wanted to win her over but knew that wouldn’t happen overnight.
‘It took me six years to work it out,’ he went on. ‘I don’t expect you to start coping with the potential problems of our relationship right at this moment. I know you feel passionately about me. That’s a start. It’s enough for the time being.'
Absently, he kissed her warm scalp. She smelt of a herb...rosemaiy. He wondered if she used it to shampoo her hair. There was so much he wanted to know. A lifetime of knowing.
‘Gran depends on me,’ she mumbled wearily against his throat, her words sending shivers over his skin. ‘I can’t ever leave her.’
Tipping up her chin, he looked her solemnly in the eyes and said, ‘I’m not sure I could, either! I’m only interested in you because she’s part of the package too.’
Trish didn’t laugh, as he’d hoped she might. ‘You’ve been very kind to her,’ she said, with a heartrending shake of her voice. ‘I...’ She seemed to be struggling with contradictory emotions.
‘I’m glad you came, Adam!’ she said, albeit a little stiffly.
He held that simple, wonderful phrase to him, throughout the waiting, Trish’s emotional reunion with her grandmother, and the journey back late that evening, during which he quietly assured Trish that her grandmother would be fine, the doctor had said so, and they were only keeping her in overnight as a precautionary measure. Eventually Trish’s lashes fluttered down to rest thickly on her cheeks and he left her wedged in the small cabin to sleep. He and Joe had things to discuss.
Trish reluctantly emerged from a wonderful dream. She and Adam and her grandmother were seeing two children off to school on the Tresco boat. Her children. Adam’s. They waved merrily to the blue-clad figures and trudged back up the hill to...
That was when she woke. Her mouth pinched in as reality hammered itself into her thick skull. In a few years’
time he’d be waving merrily to his neatly uniformed children as they alighted from his Bentley and walked sedately into their prep school. Then he’d go off to his hermetically sealed office, hurl faxes and gigabytes in all directions and return to the perfectly preserved Louise for cocktails and a trendy dinner for twenty intimate friends.
Six o’clock. She scrambled out of bed and went to the bathroom. Then the events of the day before came rushing back. Gran! How was she? Was it too early to ring?
And... Her hand went to her mouth. Who had put her into her pyjamas? The last thing she’d known was falling asleep...on the boat! Cautiously her hand went downwards to check. No knickers!
A frame of red swept over her face and she whirled around. There they were, neatly placed on the chair beside the bed. With her bra. The sundress had been thoughtfully hung on one of the padded satin hangers she’d made. Trish dressed herself, fed the chickens and laid the tables for breakfast. All the time she did so, she was trying to ignore the trickles of excitement which had invaded her bloodstream. He had touched her body. Looked at it. Maybe allowed his hands to linger...