Stolen Summer

by Anne Mather

  ‘Oh, Marsha!’ Shelley was genuinely delighted for her friend. ‘When did this come about?’

  ‘A few days ago.’ Marsha was offhand. ‘It couldn’t have come at a better time. I was looking for a reason to come to London.’

  ‘You were?’ The kettle boiled and Shelley could hide her confusion in filling the teapot. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I wanted to see you.’ Marsha was honest. ‘Mike Berlitz isn’t the only one who’s had second thoughts.’ She paused, and then continued uncomfortably: ‘I don’t expect you to believe this, Shelley, but I wish I hadn’t jumped to such predictable conclusions.’

  ‘Oh—well—’ Shelley picked up the tray, and because it was expected of her, Marsha moved back into the living room. There was an awkward little silence while Shelley set the tray on a glass-topped coffee table beside the couch and then, equally because she felt it was expected of her, Shelley added: ‘Couldn’t we just—forget about it?’

  Marsha seated herself on the chesterfield before replying, but when she did, Shelley’s cheeks flamed with colour. ‘I don’t think we can—forget about it,’ she demurred. ‘For whatever reason, my son is in love with you, Shelley. I’ve had to accept it, and I think you must, too.’

  Shelley made no attempt to deal with the cups and saucers. Her hands were shaking so much, she was sure she would either spill the tea or drop the cups or both. Instead, she lowered her trembling body on to the arm of the chair opposite, and gazed at the other woman with something akin to distraction.

  ‘It’s true,’ said Marsha, taking over the role of hostess, and pouring the tea with rather more self-possession. ‘And I’m hoping that Charles was not mistaken when he told me that you cared for him, too. Not Charles, of course.’ A fleeting smile briefly lit her features. ‘And to think I thought the bad experience you had had with Mike Berlitz was responsible for your indifference to him!’

  Shelley shook her head. ‘Marsha—’

  ‘Not yet, my dear. Let me finish.’ Marsha added milk and, ignoring Shelley’s protest, several spoonfuls of sugar, to one of the dainty cups and held it out to her. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Drink it. The sugar will sustain you, and you look as though you need it.’

  Shelley took the cup in both hands and obediently raised it to her lips. It was unbearably sweet, but mindful of Marsha’s warning gaze, she drank it down steadily, finally finding some strength of her own in the dark brown strength of the liquid.

  ‘Good.’ Marsha took the empty tea cup from her and replaced it on the tray. ‘It’s obvious you’ve not been looking after yourself as you should. Which seems to prove Charles’s supposition that he’s more perceptive than I am.’

  ‘Charles?’ Shelley tried to think coherently. ‘What has he been saying?’

  ‘Not a lot.’ Marsha lifted her shoulders. ‘He only succeeded in convincing me that I had to do something about—well, about both of you.’

  ‘Both of us?’ echoed Shelley anxiously. ‘You mean me—and Ben?’ She stiffened. ‘Is Ben all right? You didn’t say.’

  Marsha hesitated. ‘He’s not ill, if that’s what you mean,’ she murmured diffidently. ‘But—oh, Shelley! you will agree to see him, won’t you? I know he won’t ask you himself—not after what you said. But if you do care for him at all, then please do this for me. I know my behaviour hasn’t always been admirable, but I love my son, Shelley.’ She shook her head. ‘I love you both.’

  Shelley stared at her blankly. ‘I don’t understand…’

  ‘It’s quite simple.’ Marsha cleared her throat. ‘A week after you left Craygill, Dickon broke off his engagement.’

  Shelley gulped. ‘He broke it off?’

  ‘Yes.’ Marsha sighed. ‘Oh—it wasn’t quite without its drama. Dickon and I were hardly speaking, you see, and he’d told me in no uncertain terms that as soon as he decently could, he was leaving. Of course, with Frank Chater’s health still causing some concern, he felt obliged to stay on, for the present at least, and I suppose I still hoped he might change his mind.’ She grimaced. ‘I was wrong.’

  Shelley frowned. ‘But if Mr Chater—’

  ‘It was Sarah,’ said Marsha, interrupting her. ‘You remember Sarah, don’t you? Well, I fired her, and to get back at me, she carried some tale to Jennifer about you and Dickon.’ She gave a weary shrug. ‘There was the most God-awful row!’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Marsha shook her head. ‘It was exactly the opportunity Dickon had been waiting for.’

  Shelley gazed uncertainly at her. ‘He left?’

  ‘No.’ Marsha made a negative gesture. ‘Thank God, not yet at any rate. But he has applied for a job in West Africa, and if he gets it…’ Her voice tailed away, but her meaning was evident.

  Shelley moistened her lips, ‘And—and you want me to persuade him not to go?’

  ‘Yes. No. At least—oh, Shelley, I know I’m doing this badly, but I’m not here purely for selfish reasons. I would have written, but I was afraid you wouldn’t read my letter, and it wasn’t easy, finding an excuse to come to London.’

  ‘But why did you need an excuse?’ exclaimed Shelley helplessly. ‘Surely you knew I would never turn you away.’

  ‘Oh, my dear—’ Marsha bent her head in some embarrassment. ‘After the way I treated you, you have every right to hate me. I let you think you could depend upon me, and then I let you down so badly.’

  ‘No.’ Shelley left her perch and went to sit on the chesterfield beside her friend. ‘No, you didn’t let me down, Marsha, I let you.’ She made a sound of self-derision. ‘I didn’t want to hurt you. I was sure it was just—just infatuation. On Ben’s part, at least. I’m older than he is. I thought I had more sense. I knew I was deceiving you, but I thought that was better than ruining Ben’s life!’

  ‘By admitting you were in love with him, you mean?’ suggested Marsha quietly, and Shelley hesitated only a moment before nodding. ‘So you will go and see him then?’

  Shelley expelled her breath on a gulp. ‘I—I don’t know if I should.’

  ‘You must!’ Marsha was determined. ‘I haven’t told you everything. Dickon—Ben—hasn’t been well—’

  ‘But you said—’

  ‘I said he wasn’t ill now, and he’s not.’ Marsha caught Shelley’s fluttering hands and held on to them. ‘Listen to me, Shelley. He got soaked one night, helping Dave Sanderson’s prize heifer to calve. The stupid animal got out of the barn, and she was bogged down in the mud flats by the river when they ran her to ground. It was a filthy night, and Dickon caught a chill. If I’d known anything about it, I’d have insisted he let me fetch him to Craygill, and I’d have taken care of him; but I didn’t. It was Charles who told me what was going on. Dickon’s daily woman called him when she found him half-unconscious on the kitchen floor.’

  Shelley’s stomach heaved. ‘Oh, God!’

  Marsha nodded. ‘You can imagine how I felt. It was pneumonia, of course, and for a couple of days, he hardly knew who I was. Anyway, by the time he had recovered, he and I had achieved at least a measure of civility, and although we don’t mention you, we’re not so distant with one another as we were.’

  ‘Oh, Marsha!’

  ‘Which brings me to the same question: will you go and see him? He’s living on his nerves—just as you are—and Charles insists that I’m to blame for not realising what was going on.’

  Shelley swallowed. ‘Go to Craygill, you mean?’

  ‘No.’ Marsha shook her head, and Shelley looked confused. ‘The Metropolitan Hotel,’ her friend explained gently. ‘As Charles insisted he took a couple of weeks holiday, I persuaded him to come to London with me.’

  Shelley drew back. ‘Does he know you’re here?’

  ‘No.’ Marsha sighed. ‘I doubt if he would have let me come, if he had known what I intended. He’s very proud, Shelley, and I think you’ve convinced him you really don’t care.’

  * * *

  The Metropolitan Hotel stood in Piccadilly, its elegant
façade looking with some disdain on the less imposing edifices surrounding it. Once falling into disrepair, it had now been modernised by an Arab consortium, and Shelley was reluctantly impressed as she crossed its cushioned floor.

  Marsha had told her that the rooms she and Ben had taken were on the fourth floor and, ignoring the enquiring gaze of a porter, Shelley made directly for the lifts.

  ‘Four,’ she said, in answer to the lift attendant’s obsequious request, and endeavoured to give her attention to her surroundings as the mirrored cage swept upwards.

  There was a padded bench in the lift, a remnant of the days when hotels like these were the exclusive haunt of the rich and famous, who regarded standing as something of an imposition. But Shelley was too tense to appreciate the luxury, and when the gate was opened at the fourth floor, she quickly hurried out.

  Room 425 was at the farthest end of a carpeted corridor, and as she hastened along it, it occurred to her that Ben could be out. Just because Marsha expected him to be getting ready for dinner at this time was no reason to be assured of the fact and, as it was almost half-past six, he could be downstairs in the bar.

  Her fingers shook as she raised them to knock, and she cast an anxious glance at her appearance. She should have worn a skirt, she thought, taking an intense dislike to the green suede pants suit she had chosen. But the bulky garments had seemed to offer a means to disguise her painful thinness, and Marsha had been enthusiastic when she had presented herself to her.

  But now, she was not so sure. Did she look too severe—too angular? too masculine in clothes that did nothing for her femininity? Even the russet silk shirt she was wearing was plain and undramatic, only its vivid colour suggesting a less consistent attitude to style.

  Whatever, it was too late now to change either her mind or her clothes, and gathering all her confidence, she made her presence known. But the tentative tattoo was scarcely audible, and she was obliged to knock again before evoking a reply.

  ‘Hang on!’ It was Ben’s voice, and her heart skipped a beat. ‘I won’t be a second.’

  The few seconds he took before opening the door seemed the longest of Shelley’s life, and when the door did move inward, she was almost persuaded to take to her heels. What if he was still angry with her? What if he refused to speak to her? How would she cope with the blow it would deal her after having her hopes lifted so high?

  ‘Shelley!’

  His expression of shock and amazement was not encouraging, and it didn’t help when he wrapped the folds of a white bathrobe more closely about him, with the air of someone wearing nothing underneath. Evidently, he had been in either the bath or the shower when she summoned him to the door, and although it should have put her at an advantage, it didn’t.

  Nevertheless, she was disturbed by the gauntness of his features. His illness—and what else?—had given his face a stark austerity, and even the pigment of his skin had faded to a pallid tan. The robe made it impossible to discern any other changes in his physical appearance, but she guessed that his skin was stretched tautly over his bones, and there was not an ounce of spare flesh on him.

  ‘Hello, Ben,’ she managed, squeezing her clutch bag tightly between her fingers. ‘Can I speak to you?’

  He hesitated, gripping the edge of the door and obstructing her passage. ‘I thought you were my mother,’ he said, obliquely. And then, his lips twisting in sudden comprehension, he added: ‘Of course. She told you where I was. She must be more desperate than I thought.’

  Shelley held up her head. ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me then?’ she asked, half suspecting Marsha had not been completely truthful with her, and Ben expelled his breath wearily.

  ‘That depends,’ he said. ‘If the only reason you’ve come here is to add your weight to my mother’s argument that I shouldn’t consider an overseas appointment, then no.’

  Shelley quivered. ‘And if it’s not the only reason?’

  Ben’s mouth tightened. ‘Then I should ask what other reason there could be,’ he responded flatly. ‘From what Berlitz told my mother, I gather you’ve succeeded in finding a new appointment, so it’s not because you’re out of a job. And if you’ve got some crazy notion that because you and my mother have apparently started speaking again we should resume our friendship, then forget it.’

  Shelley caught her tongue between her teeth. ‘Don’t you want to be my friend, Ben?’ she queried softly, and he scowled.

  ‘No,’ he replied succinctly. ‘I don’t want to be your friend. Now, do you mind if I terminate this conversation? As you can see, I was about to take a bath, and I’d like to get back to it before the water gets cold.’

  Shelley took a deep breath. ‘I’ll wait.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes.’ Taking the biggest gamble of her life, Shelley brushed past him into his hotel room. ‘I might even scrub your back if you ask me nicely.’

  ‘Shelley—’ There was a note of strain in his voice now, and she heard it with a sense of relief. Marsha had not been lying; Charles had not been lying; Ben was tearing himself to pieces, and it was all her fault.

  ‘Close the door, Ben,’ she said, knowing exactly what she must do, and although he swore, very colourfully, he did as he was asked.

  ‘This isn’t going to work, Shelley,’ he got out harshly. ‘I suppose my mother’s told you that my engagement to Jennifer is all washed-up, and you feel a totally unnecessary sense of responsibility—’

  ‘Stop talking such utter rot,’ Shelley interrupted him huskily, placing her bag on top of his suitcase, and unbuttoning her jacket. Then, depositing it beside her bag, she sauntered casually across to the window. ‘Not much of a view,’ she remarked, noting the soot-smeared tower of a church across a paved square. ‘But then, people don’t usually come to hotels to look out of the window, do they? They’re far more concerned with the reasons they’re there.’

  ‘Why are you here, Shelley?’ asked Ben, at last, and turning to find him pushing back his hair with weary fingers, she knew that for both of them there was no turning back.

  ‘Would you believe—because I love you?’ she asked, saying it lightly, forcing herself to be flippant, half afraid even now that she might have got it wrong, and Ben’s breath escaped with a rush.

  ‘How—how inconvenient for you,’ he muttered, making no move towards her, and Shelley wondered tensely if they had actually gone too far.

  ‘It’s—only inconvenient if you want to make it so,’ she ventured huskily, and Ben’s lips curled.

  ‘You mean—now that Jennifer’s out of the way and my mother’s apparently prepared to accept the fact of our relationship, you wouldn’t object too strongly if we saw one another now and then?’

  ‘No.’ Shelley took a few steps towards him, and then came to a halt, deterred by his grim expression. ‘No, that’s not what I meant, Ben. I said I love you!’

  ‘And what am I supposed to do about it?’ he demanded. ‘Stay in this country because if I go to Africa we’ll have no chance to see one another?’

  ‘No—’

  ‘Or maybe you’d like me to find a post nearer London, hmm? In Buckinghamshire or Hertford-shire, perhaps. What about London itself? If that would make it easier for you.’

  ‘Ben, stop it!’

  ‘Why should I stop it? It’s the truth, isn’t it? You don’t really care about me. One way or another, you and my mother have cooked up this plan to keep me on hand, like a lapdog, ready to perform, whenever the fancy takes you!’

  ‘No—’

  ‘Then what?’ Ben uttered an ugly oath. ‘You can’t mean anything more permanent. You’ve got a new job, remember? A position of some importance, isn’t that the truth? and let’s not forget I’m younger than you are, and far too naïve for my own good!’

  ‘Oh, Ben.’ Shelley shook her head. ‘I know I’ve hurt you—’

  ‘Like hell!’

  ‘—but I hurt myself, too.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes, me.’ She narrowe
d the distance between them a little more, and spread her hands. ‘Ben, the only reason I’m here is because I care about you. God knows, I didn’t want to care about you. Like you say, I’m older, and I’m not the kind of woman you should want. When I went away, I thought I was doing the right thing—for you, for me, for everyone. I didn’t believe you when you said you loved me. I wouldn’t let myself believe you!’

  ‘And now?’ he enquired without emotion.

  ‘Now?’ She shook her head. ‘That’s up to you.’

  ‘And your job?’

  Ben’s jaw was tight, as if he was having difficulty in maintaining his composure, and Shelley was encouraged.

  ‘There is no job,’ she told him, tentatively touching his sleeve. ‘Oh—I’ve been offered one, but I haven’t accepted it yet.’

  ‘And are you going to?’

  Shelley hesitated. ‘That rather depends on you.’

  Ben shook his head and turned away. ‘I can’t make your decisions for you.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to.’ Shelley stepped even closer, so that the hem of his bathrobe brushed her knees. ‘But—you do still want me, don’t you?’

  Ben groaned, as if driven beyond his resistance, his hands groping unsteadily for her face, cradling it between his palms and stroking her lips with his. ‘Yes, I want you,’ he muttered, but there was no joy in the admission. ‘But not on your terms,’ he added, using his strength to propel her away. ‘Now—will you get out of here?’

  Shelley stared at him. ‘What—terms?’

  ‘I don’t want an affair, Shelley,’ he told her grimly, and the lines that bracketed his mouth gave him a maturity far beyond his years. ‘You persuaded me once that it was enough, and I believed you. But it wasn’t. I don’t want to go through that again.’

  ‘Oh, Ben!’ Shelley trembled. ‘Does that mean your offer is withdrawn?’

  ‘What offer?’

  Shelley held up her head. ‘You asked me to marry you once,’ she declared unsteadily. ‘I didn’t realise there was a limit to your proposal.’