Enemy From the Past

by Lilian Peake

  Rosalind pressed her trembling lips together, then said, ‘If I don’t make it, John, you’ll be seeing a marriage smash to pieces under your very eyes.’

  ‘Okay, hold on to your seat!’

  John did his best. All the lights were at red. The hands of the car clock moved inexorably nearer to the deadline.

  ‘John,’ she said, ‘even now I might be too late.’

  ‘I’m doing my best, love.’

  ‘I know you are, John, I know you are. I’m sorry…’

  Her heart was thudding, her whole body shaking, when John’s car finally screeched to a stop outside the terminal building. ‘I’ll wait a few minutes,’ he told her through the window, ‘just in case.’

  Rosalind waved her hand in thanks and ran until she gasped for air, pushing at doors, hearing through her panic the roar of a plane taking off as the hand of the clock hit the hour. No, no! The words screamed in her head. Too late now. In desperation she looked around, but her eyes were blinded by tears. Then she saw the lines of people at the desks, where tickets were being taken by smartly-dressed girls, cases being handed over …

  There he was! She felt herself go cold. He was next in the line. Now he was the first…

  ‘Slade, Slade!’ It was meant to be a shout, but it had become a strangled scream. Heads swung, people stopped in their tracks. She hurtled through the crowds as they stood back, letting her pass. Everything seemed to have come to a stop. The girl who was about to deal with Slade’s case waited, hand raised, to take the ticket. ‘Please,’ Rosalind pleaded with her, ‘don’t!’

  The girl looked at Slade enquiringly. He in turn looked at Rosalind. He saw the anguish, the pleading eyes, the breathless wildness about her.

  ‘Don’t go,’ she urged. She had to think of a reason. The girl’s hand still hovered, impatient now. Voices coming over the speaker system echoed in Rosalind’s brain. ‘It’s— it’s an emergency,’ she said. ‘At—at home. Something’s happened.’

  Slade seemed suspicious, irritated. He was plainly unconvinced. Rosalind bent swiftly, a hand to each of his suitcases. They were heavy, but she summoned all her strength and swung them away, walking off with them. ‘Hey there!’ Slade called after her, but she walked determinedly on.

  Once she turned and saw him speaking to the attendant, explaining to her that something was wrong. He seemed to be apologising and to the people behind him. He pushed his ticket into an inner pocket, then he strode away from the line of desks and people and made for the retreating figure of his wife.

  As he joined her outside, a flash of red on four wheels was disappearing from view. Rosalind was gazing after it. Slade took his cases from her and put them on the ground. ‘First,’ he demanded, ‘who’s car was that?’

  ‘John’s. He brought me.’

  She saw Slade’s lips harden. ‘Second, who told you where I was?’ Rosalind compressed her lips. ‘And to think I swore them to secrecy! But I can take a guess which female member of my family it was.’

  Rosalind countered, ‘You told me you were going north to see Harry Adamson. And Nedra.’

  ‘I did. I then travelled to the north-west to visit my parents. To say goodbye.’ He picked up his cases. ‘So now you know. I might just have time to catch my plane. I doubt if a second delay will prevent it from leaving this time.’

  Rosalind looked at him. There was one way to stop him. She pleaded, ‘Kiss me before you go.’ Her lips trembled through a smile.

  His eyes narrowed. He put down the cases, held her shoulders and put his lips against hers. With the speed of a cat streaking across the road, her hand found its way to his inner jacket pocket. Her fingers fastened on to the airline ticket and she drew it out. She turned and ran.

  ‘Why, you little—’ Slade grabbed his cases and saw a taxi driving away from depositing its passengers.

  He hailed it, said to the driver, ‘Catch that girl,’ and got in, dumping his cases on the taxi floor. Moments later the taxi screeched to a stop just ahead of Rosalind’s fleeing figure. Slade swung out, grabbed her by the collar of her jacket and propelled her into the taxi, throwing her inside.

  He leaned forward and spoke to the driver through the glass partition. ‘The Post Horn Hotel, please. It’s only a mile or two up the road.’

  The driver nodded. ‘I know it, sir. I wouldn’t be assisting in an abduction, would I?’ Rosalind could see his smile reflected in the driving mirror.

  ‘No.’ Slade’s voice was clipped. ‘Nor even a kidnapping. Just witnessing a husband exercising his legal and physical control over his misbehaving wife.’

  The smile in the mirror broadened, but the owner of it made no comment. Slade stared broodingly out of the window. Rosalind’s mouth was compressed painfully. Then, as her brain began to thaw after an hour of almost mindless anguish, her lips began to quiver. Some reunion, she thought, some reconciliation this was! What had she done? Snatched from the jaws of a giant aircraft a cold-hearted, reluctant husband. It was plain that he did not want her. Why hadn’t she let him go?

  They faced each other across the hotel room. Slade had taken the room for a night, but Rosalind knew they would not be staying.

  ‘The explanation had better be good.’ Slade’s voice was rasping, grazing her sensitivity like a leg which had hit the gravel.

  ‘You were going to leave me,’ she said. ‘Without explanation or reason. Just like that.’

  Strolling to the window and gazing at the constant arrival and departure of cars in the forecourt, Slade said, ‘My main reason for going north this weekend was to make a decision.’

  Rosalind stared at his straight back, at the jacket draped over the hands in his pockets. ‘About—about Nedra?’

  He seemed puzzled. ‘What has Nedra to do with this?’

  ‘You tell me. You selected her for interview, for the job, you chose her on sight. You not only tolerated her pursuit of you but seemed to revel in it.’

  He turned, standing with his legs stiffly apart. ‘Incredible how a woman’s mind works! What she doesn’t know she makes up. She’s ruled by her imagination instead of her reason.’ He turned again to the window. The flags of many nations displayed along the forecourt entrance lifted gently in the breeze. ‘However, my reason prevailed when I appointed her. I chose her because in my opinion she was all that Compro—not I—needed. If she in her turn chose to “pursue” me, as you call it, then that was her business. I was not available to be “caught”.’

  ‘No,’ Rosalind challenged, ‘you wouldn’t be, would you? You like your freedom too much.’

  He did not rise to the taunt but went on, ‘I needed to make a decision—whether or not to accept Pennant Wills’ invitation to rejoin the team I was working with in America. There was one tiling I needed to know before making it. Last night I telephoned you—-twice. Twice the call was answered by a man. I recognised the voice—that of John Welson. Since the second was made at midnight, I had my answer.’

  She sank on to the bed. ‘You actually made such an important decision on such arbitrary evidence? That John was still at the house at midnight? And you have the cheek to accuse women of being ruled by their imaginations!’

  He turned slowly and paced the room, shaking his head. ‘Not just imagination. Observation, consideration of the evidence—I told you on Friday night.’

  ‘You’re talking just like a computer,’ she blazed. ‘You’re fed with data—programmes, codes, specialised language— and out comes the answer. Except that your just like a wrongly programmed computer, can come up with the wrong answer!’

  He stood in front of the mirror, loosened his tie, felt for stubble on his cheeks, removed his jacket, throwing it on to a chair. He folded his arms and came to stand in front of her. ‘Explain away his presence at the house at midnight.’

  She looked down at her clasped hands. ‘He just stayed on, out of friendship.’ There was a disbelieving sound from Slade. ‘The first silent phone call frightened me, but the second scared me.’


  ‘So he stayed on all night just in case?’

  Her head jerked up. ‘No, no!’

  Slade walked away. There was talking in the corridor. The language sounded like German. The voices faded.

  Rosalind said flatly, ‘You were going to walk out on Patrick, leaving him to sink without trace.’

  ‘Not true.’ His voice was expressionless. ‘I discussed the matter with him fully when we both met at my parents’ house, which is where I stayed over the weekend.’

  Softly she asked, ‘How did they take your decision?’

  ‘Very badly. They used all their powers of persuasion to make me change my mind.’ Another pause, then, ‘I’m leaving behind all the money I put into Compro, even adding to it. I told Patrick he could take up his partnership with John from where it broke off. I brought John back to the firm partly for your sake.’

  ‘For my sake?’

  ‘I heard you greeting him on the phone when he talked to you from Bristol. You’d told me he had once asked you to marry him. It sounded very much as if you were regretting your refusal.’

  ‘You didn’t think of asking me, of course.’

  ‘No. I didn’t want to hear the answer. I wanted you for myself.’

  ‘I remember,’ she said, her voice hard, ‘oh, I remember so well. “I’ll be back, Rosa,” you said, all those years ago. “And even if you’re married, I won’t care. I’ll make you pay for what you’ve said and done to me.” You kept your promise, didn’t you? You married me not for love but revenge.’

  ‘I took all that into account when I made my decision to return to America,’ he said quietly. ‘I have a memory, too, Rosa.’ He stood in front of her now, hands back in pockets. ‘How many times did you say, I’ll hate you till the day I die?’

  A jet plane roared overhead. When it was quiet again Rosalind whispered, ‘But I didn’t mean it. I only said it out of pique, because of your attitude to me, to women in general. Like the way you said once that you liked playing one woman off against another.’

  ‘I——’ He changed his mind and after a few moments, spoke again. ‘If at any time during our lovemaking you showed signs of loving me, I knew it was only because I’d given you pleasure, ecstasy even.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Slade, so wrong.’

  He walked away, came back. ‘Look, I’ve already acknowledged that I forced you into marriage, using Patrick and Compro as a weapon. At the time I had no idea that there might be another man in your life. Patrick told me over the weekend how you hesitated about refusing John’s proposal of marriage. You’d told Patrick that John was all you wanted in a man except for one thing. What that “one thing” was, Patrick didn’t know.’

  ‘And when John answered your calls last night, you were convinced your hunch was right? That I wanted to take up with John where we’d left off?’

  ‘That’s the direction in which my thoughts led me. I called you last night to tell you I was releasing you if that was what you wanted. Knowing that John was still at the house when you’re usually in bed, I concluded that it was, beyond doubt, what you wanted. So I cabled Penn in San Francisco and said I’d decided to take him up on his offer. But I’d be arriving alone.’

  Her heart was making singing sounds, but they were slightly off key. ‘Our marriage was a condition of your signing that contract,’ she said evenly.

  He sat beside her but apart. ‘That was not true, Rosa. I’d already signed. I wanted to marry you, but I knew you wouldn’t voluntarily marry me. Patrick and I connived to get you into a situation where you couldn’t refuse me. Yet another reason for my decision to leave—our marriage was based on a lie.’

  Picking up his jacket, he pulled it on and looked round for his cases. ‘Now if you’ll give me my airline ticket, I’ll attempt to book a flight on another plane.’

  An aircraft zoomed low, blotting out sound. Rosalind opened her handbag and took the ticket out. ‘Come and get it,’ she said and backing away, pushed it down her blouse front, into the cleavage between her breasts.

  His cases hit the floor with a bump. ‘Why, you little witch!’ He approached, head lowered. ‘You witch of witches. I’ll get it, with the greatest of pleasure.’

  She waited until he was almost on to her, then dodged past him, making for the bathroom. She pushed at the door in an attempt to lock it, but he was pushing from the other side. Her strength did not match his and he was there, in front of her, his hand reaching down to her breasts for the ticket. Her hands trapped his hand where it was and her eyes, intense and passionate gazed into his.

  Her breathing quickened. ‘That “one thing” that was missing from John Welson was that he wasn’t you.’ Her eyes moistened. ‘I love you, Slade, I love you … I’ll never stop loving you till the day I die. Do you believe me? Let me show you, let me prove to you how—’ the words caught in her throat, ‘how I can’t do without you.’ Tears rose and fell in rivulets down her cheeks. ‘How I don’t even want to live without you.’

  Her hands fell away, his fingers grasped the ticket and it fluttered to the floor. Slade cupped her elbows and pulled her against him. There was a faint touch of moisture on his brow and upper lip.

  ‘All those years,’ he murmured, ‘all those years of waiting, waiting for you. Making money to give you whatever you wanted, saving it up for you.’ His lips touched her ear, making her shiver. ‘There’s never really been any other woman in my life but you, my Rosa.’

  Her arms lifted, locking round his neck. ‘Darling,’ she said, pressing her face against the hardness of his chest. Her arms moved and her fingers unfastened the shirt buttons, rubbing against the dark hairs inside.

  ‘I can do that, too,’ he whispered, and proceeded to unfasten her shirt buttons, his hand seeking and finding the enticing softness of her breasts, bending down to kiss and caress them with demanding urgent lips. With her head thrown back, she clung to him. He straightened, murmuring, ‘I want you, here and now I want you. And I want you the way any husband wants his wife—with no barriers whatsoever to part them. You understand me?’

  Joyfully she nodded.

  ‘Get on that bed,’ he ordered, ‘and prepare for your lover to come to you.’

  Silently, ecstatically, she acquiesced.

  Slade went to the door, lifted the ‘Do not disturb’ notice from the hook, opened the door and hung the notice outside. A few moments later they were in each other’s arms. As he had demanded, there were now no barriers to separate them.

  He whispered, ‘In my pocket-book is a photograph of a young girl leaning over a birthday cake. Her face is lit by the light from sixteen candles. I’ve loved that girl all my life. That’s why I wanted to marry her. And now she’s here in my arms, for the first time completely and truly mine.’

  ‘Completely and truly yours,’ she echoed, surrendering with a cry of joy.