Never Leave Me

by Margaret Pemberton

  He wondered if she had suggested accompanying him to Lake Tahoe in order that Melanie would feel part of a secure family unit, or in order to please Dominic. A frown furrowed his brow. Certainly Dominic was beginning to notice their estrangement, and to suffer because of it. A wave of love, fierce and protective, swept over him. No matter what happened, he would be damned to hell before he saw either of his children hurt. He looked across at Dominic’s pinched white face and said tersely, ‘If you really want to come with us to Tahoe, Lisette, you’d better buy yourself a new parka, and buy one for Melanie as well. I doubt if she’ll be bringing one with her from London.’

  Her eyes flashed up to his but he wasn’t looking at her any longer. He was ruffling Dominic’s hair, wiping Lucy’s sticky kiss from his cheek, promising them he would be home early to greet Melanie.

  As his silver-blue Cadillac limousine swept away down the drive, she stood at the windows watching. His days were now as much a mystery to her as hers were to him. The gossip columns told her more about his life than he did. How he had staunchly supported Eisenhower in his successful bid for the White House; how it was rumoured that he, himself, was thinking of running for Congress.

  The Cadillac disappeared from view and she wondered if he would be seeing Jacqueline Pleydall at lunchtime. If he really would come home early that evening. If she would ever, ever have the courage to talk to him as she knew she must.

  Early morning fog hung thick and heavy across the bay and she shivered, hoping that it would clear before Melanie’s flight was due, turning away as the slow hoot of fog horns echoed over the invisible water.

  ‘Can I come with you to meet Melanie?’ Dominic asked as Lucy excused herself from the table and began to gather up her school books.

  ‘No, chéri, you must go to school.’

  Dominic stared at her, appalled. ‘That isn’t fair! She’ll be expecting me to be there when she lands! Please, Maman.’

  His use of his baby name for her was an indication of how distressed he was by her refusal. She hugged him tight. ‘Alors! Is it so important, ma petit?’

  Dieter’s eyes, grey and black-lashed, held hers. ‘Yes, Maman. We’re friends,’ he explained.

  She ruffled his dark gold hair. ‘Then you must come with me,’ she said, with a catch in her throat. ‘I’ll tell Simonette that only Lucy is going to school today.’

  ‘Merci, Maman,’ he said, his eyes shining.

  As she checked that Lucy had all her school books with her, Lisette wondered why it was that Dominic should so happily speak to her in her own language when Lucy never did. In three years’ time his school syllabus would offer him the choice of German or Spanish. She wondered which he would choose. It would be strange to hear him speaking his father’s language. Her eyes were pensive as she kissed Lucy goodbye. The German language was his birthright. She hoped passionately that it would be his choice, but knew she would say nothing to sway his decision, for she was quite sure that Greg would be as appalled if he chose it, as she would be pleased.

  ‘Can we take Mel to Chinatown and to the zoo?’ Dominic asked eagerly as they waited at the children’s collection desk at the airport.

  ‘We shall take Melanie wherever she wants to go,’ Lisette promised, wondering what Dieter would have said to the friendship between his son and Luke Brandon’s daughter. She had begun to think of him more and more, trying to imagine what his advice to her would have been. He had been a man who had hated deceit. A man who had valued courage. As an air hostess approached, a shining-eyed Melanie holding on to her hand, she knew very well what his advice to her would have been: to tell Greg the truth and to live with the consequences. The worst thing that could happen was that he would leave her, but in every way that mattered he had left her already.

  ‘Auntie Lisette! Dominic!’ Melanie cried, tearing herself free of the air hostess’s restraining hand and hurtling to meet them.

  As her arms opened wide and she hugged Melanie tight, Lisette knew that her decision was made and that she would not go back on it. She would do nothing while Melanie was with them. The risk of Melanie overhearing when she confessed to her affair with Luke was too great. But the instant Melanie returned to London she would drive down to Carmel and remove her possessions from the cottage. She would terminate the affair she should never have embarked upon. And she would tell Greg the truth.

  ‘I was on the aeroplane for ages and ages,’ Melanie said rapturously to Dominic as they climbed into the Lincoln. ‘I had breakfast and lunch and dinner on the plane, and I never fell asleep once, even though Daddy said I would!’

  ‘Well, don’t fall asleep now,’ Dominic said; grinning. ‘We’re going to show you the Golden Gate Bridge.’

  ‘Gosh!’ Melanie said, leaning forward to look out of the windows as they swept out onto the freeway. ‘What a huge road! I’m going to enjoy America, Dominic. I know I am!’

  Dering Advertising soared five floors above street level. Greg strode through his deeply carpeted private entrance, bypassing the glamorously dramatic reception area with its wall of bronze-tinted mirrors and twenty-foot semi-circular desk. His elevator sped upwards. The top floor was his private domain. It was there that the wheeling and dealing took place. There, that all major decisions were taken. He ran a mental eye over the appointments ahead of him that day.

  A meeting with Nick to see the first visuals for the ‘Cosmetics á la Carte’campaign. A nine-thirty meeting with Hal Green to finalise the details of Bering’s takeover of Hal’s agency. A meeting with his financial director. An eleven o’clock meeting with Nick, the media, and board directors; lunch with the chairman of United Oil. Then Acapulco to meet with the chairman of Wainwrights to discuss a possible future merger. He had intended piloting himself to the Acapulco meeting and maybe staying over a day. If he did so, he would be unable to keep his promise to Dominic.

  He strode out of the elevator. The decor was all white, beige and grey, the walls covered in oatmeal cream linen. ‘Cancel the Acapulco meeting,’ he said to his secretary, pulling down the knot of his tie and undoing the top button of his shirt as he slid his briefcase onto the massive surface of his white oak desk. ‘Refix it for Monday. Tell Russell I want to see Mr Fox of United Airlines for ten minutes before he takes him into their meeting, and tell Grant that the position of our Chrysler ad in this morning’s New York Times was bad and that the client was right. The Chrysler logo needs to be bigger.’

  ‘Yes Mr Dering,’ she said, running her eyes down his page of appointments. She would have laid down and died for him if he had asked her. Her predecessor had warned her not to fall in love with him, but it had been easier said than done. He reminded her of a riverboat gambler with his rumpled hair and easy assurance. There were rumours that he was squiring one of New York’s top models whenever business took him to the east coast, which was two or three times a month. She didn’t know if the rumours were true or not. The silver-framed photograph of his French wife still stood on his desk.

  ‘Is everything ready for the eleven o’clock meeting?’ he asked, taking off his jacket and sliding it around the back of his leather and chrome chair.

  ‘Yes Mr Dering,’ she said, going mentally over the check list for the conference room. Ashtrays, pencils, carafes of iced water, the thick, white notepads that Mr Dering doodled on whenever a strategy meeting was in progress.

  ‘Good.’ He settled back in his chair and reached for the phone. As she left the room she was sure that the number he asked for was a New York number.

  By nine-fifteen Greg knew that his usual concentration had deserted him. He couldn’t keep his mind on Nick’s layout for the ‘Cosmetics á la Carte’campaign, and he couldn’t care less about the Hal Green takeover bid. He kept thinking of the way Lisette had spoken to him across the breakfast table; the naked plea in the low, husky tones of her voice; the feeling he had had that she was trying to reach out to him; trying to narrow the distance between them.

  ‘The main decision we have to mak
e is whether we are going to go for purity or sophistication,’ Nick was saying, laying a half dozen glossy photographs on Greg’s desk. ‘This girl has enormous vitality. She’d look great on the posters, but there’s a lack of sophistication about her that worries me. Cosmetics á la Carte is an up-market product. We need a girl with the kind of sensuality that other women will want to emulate. Someone with style and panache and inner warmth.’

  ‘Then forget this little lot,’ Greg said, sifting dismissively through the photographs that Nick had laid on his desk, ‘All you have here is veneer. Surface glamour with no depth. We want a flesh-and-blood woman to promote Cosmetics á la Carte. Someone with the kind of femininity that is timeless.’ His eyes fell on his photograph of Lisette. It had been taken on a sunny day, in the beech woods at Valmy. She was laughing, her head tilted slightly to one side, her hair falling in a long, smooth wave to her shoulders, a scarf knotted with careless elegance at her throat. ‘Someone whose face will stay in the memory for a lifetime,’ he said, a pulse throbbing at the corner of his jaw.

  ‘Jeez,’ Nick said expressively, scooping up the photographs. ‘Where am I going to find a woman like that?’

  Greg didn’t tell him. He was no longer listening to him. Twenty-four hours ago he had been contemplating divorce. Now he was no longer so sure.

  ‘Mr Green is waiting to see you,’ his secretary was saying.

  Greg continued to stare at the photograph. She had said that she wanted to talk to him and he had denied her the opportunity. Had she guessed that he was contemplating a final break between them? Was she distressed at the prospect? Indifferent?

  He rose abruptly to his feet. ‘Cancel the eleven o’clock conference,’ he said, swinging his jacket over his shoulder. ‘Tell Green I’ll see him tomorrow.’

  ‘But Mr Dering …’ his secretary gasped, running after him as he strode from the room. ‘Mr Green has flown all the way from Houston for this morning’s meeting!’

  ‘Reschedule it. If he doesn’t like it, tell him the deal is off.’

  ‘But Mr Dering …’

  The elevator doors closed behind him. She turned wide-eyed to Nick. ‘The Hal Green takeover is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars! What’s come up that’s more important?’

  Nick shrugged. ‘God knows,’ he said, staring dismally at the rejected photographs in his hand. ‘I don’t.’

  Greg slammed the Cadillac into first gear, speeding up the ramp of the underground garage and out into the brilliant winter sunlight that had followed hard on the heels of the morning fog. He felt exactly as he had done on that far off day in Normandy, when he had driven from the carnage of St Lo, hurtling back through the high-hedged lanes to Valmy, knowing that he had to see her again, if only for a moment.

  He careened out into the main street, glancing down at his watch. Ten o’clock. She would be at the airport, meeting Melanie. He overtook a trailer, showing scant regard for the municipal speed limit. The first sight anyone wanted to see when they arrived in ’Frisco was the bridge, and the best place to view the bridge was from the ‘Top of the Mark’on Nob Hill.

  He sped up to the forecourt of the Mark Hopkins hotel, slewing in behind half a dozen parked cars, seeing with relief the unmistakeable midnight-blue of her Lincoln Zephyr convertible. He swung in behind it, his sense of déjá vu stronger than ever. He had returned from St Lo to Valmy on gut instinct and he was following that instinct now. He sprang out of the car, slamming the door behind him, shielding his eyes against the sun. He could see the rich cornflower blue of her sweater and the pristine white of her slacks easily. She was standing fifty or sixty yards away, pointing something out to Melanie, her hair no longer falling unrestrainedly to her shoulders, but tied in the nape of her neck with a ribbon as it had been when she had first entered his arms, so many years ago.

  He made no move towards her. He leaned against the Cadillac’s door, his hands in his pockets, his stance as negligent and confident as it had been when he had waited for her against the gateway that led from Valmy’s drive into the sun-warmed courtyard.

  Dominic was talking to Melanie now, pointing out a ship that was making its way into the bay. Lisette stood straight, turning round to check on the Lincoln, freezing into immobility as their eyes met.

  For a long time neither of them moved. Behind her, the bridge spanned the bay, Marlin County barely visible in the distance, and then, just as he had known she would, she began to walk towards him, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed. He grinned, opening his arms wide, and the intervening years went whistling down the wind as she began to run towards him, her smile as dazzling as it had been on that long-ago afternoon when he had returned to Valmy and asked her to marry him.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  As she pressed herself fervently against him, Greg felt again the certainty he had felt at Valmy. The certainty that he loved her; that she would one day love him; the certainty that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. His arms tightened around her. She had not entered them of her own volition since the hideous night when he had walked out of their bedroom at Valmy. For the first time in all the long, tortured months he had endured since then, he wondered if she had been as lonely as he had been.

  He tilted her face up to his, tracing the delicate lines of her cheekbone and jaw with his fingertips. ‘It’s been a long time,’ he said huskily, wondering how he could ever have contemplated a divorce; ever have contemplated a life of acting as escort to glamorously beautiful women who were not her. Who had not an eighth of her radiant sensuality.

  ‘Too long,’ she whispered, feeling his heart slam against hers, feeling again the sensation of safety and security that he had always engendered in her. The feeling of being encompassed by his love.

  For a long moment his eyes held hers. He wanted to ask why, after all this time, she was returning to him. He wanted to ask about her meeting with Luke; to ask what it was that had gone wrong between them in the months and years following Lucy’s birth. Instead he said, ‘I love you, Lisette. I’ve always loved you,’ and as the children ran laughingly up to them, he lowered his head to hers, kissing her with a passion that left no room for doubt.

  ‘Daddy! Daddy! Are you going to spend all day with us?’ Dominic asked, his eyes shining.

  Slowly, regretfully, Greg lifted his head from Lisette’s. ‘I think spending the day together could well be a very good idea,’ he said, amused at their predicament. Lovers, who had not made love for months, prevented from doing so by the presence of their child.

  At the incongruity of their situation, answering laughter bubbled up in her. There would be time, later, for love-making. And time now for all the gestures of affection that she had so missed between them. Her hand slid into his, their fingers interlocking tightly.

  ‘I think we should take Melanie down to the bay for a late breakfast, and then, if she isn’t too tired, perhaps we could go to the zoo,’ she said, knowing that the happiness now suffusing her would remain until it was time for Melanie to leave them. Until it was time for them, at last, to talk.

  ‘Oh, I’d love to go to the zoo!’ Melanie said, her rosy-cheeked face ecstatic, ‘and I’m not a bit tired!’

  ‘We’ll go in the Cadillac, I’ll have the Lincoln picked up later,’ Greg said, wondering what Hal Green and the chairman of United Oil and Wainwrights would say if they knew that instead of keeping his appointments with them, he was strolling like a tourist around the vast acres of the city’s zoo.

  They breakfasted down by the wharf, enjoying Melanie’s delight as she tasted blueberry jam and bagels for the first time, and then they drove out to the Zoological Gardens, feeding seals and koala bears, watching the big cats prowl their enclosures. Lisette had done some hasty shopping down by the wharf and they picnicked on páté and French bread and brie, sitting on the grass while Dominic and Melanie ran off to see if the elephants were as big as the elephants in the London Zoo. As Greg leaned on one arm at her side, it seemed to Lisette as if thi
s was how they had always been – happy; in love. A family like to many other families strolling the zoo gardens.

  ‘You said you wanted to talk to me,’ he said, and the illusion vanished.

  ‘Yes.’ She had been lying at his side, her head resting against his chest. She sat up, hugging her legs with her arms, knowing that she had to distance herself from him before she could continue. After a moment she said, ‘I’ve wanted to talk to you for years, Greg. Ever since you returned to Valmy when the war was over. Ever since we began our life together.’

  He continued to lay at her side, resting his weight on his arm. ‘Then why didn’t you?’ he asked, forcing his voice to be casual, almost indifferent.

  There was a long silence. He saw her knuckles whiten as she hugged her legs tighter, her eyes fixed unseeingly ahead of her, resolutely avoiding his. ‘Because I was afraid,’ she said at last.

  ‘Are you still afraid?’ he asked quietly, his brows flying together, small white lines etching his mouth.

  She turned her head and looked at him. ‘No,’ she said, and there was surprise in her voice. ‘The worst thing that could happen, happened anyway. You stopped loving me.’

  He sat bolt upright. ‘That’s not true!’ He seized her shoulders, swinging her round to face him, his eyes blazing.

  ‘You asked if I would mind if we slept apart.’ There was no accusation in her voice, only remembered hurt. ‘You renewed your affair with Jacqueline Pleydall.’

  His fingers dug savagely into her shoulders. ‘I asked if you minded if we slept apart because I wanted you to say no! I wanted you to realise where your unresponsiveness to me was leading!’

  She stared at him. ‘And Jacqueline Pleydall?’ she asked, stunned.

  The lines around his mouth deepened. ‘I renewed my affair with Jacqueline because I was devastated by what was happening to us. She offered solace and comfort and I was selfish enough to take it.’