‘Offends me?’ Her voice was choked with tears. ‘Oh, Lewis! How can you possibly imagine that it offends me? If I look away as I did then, it’s only because I can’t bear to think of what they did to you … what you suffered.’
She crossed the room to him quickly, hugging him close. ‘I love you,’ she said thickly, and it was the truth. She did love him. She had always loved him. Even after she had fallen so very much in love with Scott, Lewis had still retained a place in her heart. And now for the next few hours, for his sake, she had to forget the terrible dilemma that she was in. She had to think only of Lewis and of his very great need.
He was gentle with her, and she remembered that he always had been. Slowly, with tender deliberation, he removed her bra and her panties.
‘It’s been so long, my love,’ he murmured as he drew her close to him. ‘I can’t tell you how often I’ve dreamed of this moment, longed for it with every fibre of my being.’
Her arms closed around him, and the intervening years slid away. As she closed her eyes she could almost imagine herself back in Hawaii.
‘I thought I would never see you again,’ she whispered as his hands travelled caressingly down from her breasts to her thighs. ‘Oh, Lewis! When they told me you were dead, I thought I was going to die too!’
His lovemaking had always been conventional, and as he rolled her over on to her back and covered her body with his, she was grateful for it. She didn’t want to be brought to screaming pitch by his tongue and his fingers. She didn’t want the fevered intensity that erupted so easily and so often between her and Scott. She merely wanted to hold him close, to feel his heart beating next to hers, to savour the incredible knowledge that it was Lewis who was gaining physical release and pleasure from her body, Lewis, who she had thought was dead, and who was alive.
Afterwards, still in each other’s arms, they were quiet for a long time. Abbra felt a deep sense of calm and wellbeing. No matter what would happen between them in the morning when she told him about Scott, the lovemaking they had just experienced could not be taken away from them. Lewis would know that he was sexually capable.
She ran her hands gently over the ugly weals on his back. She had been terrified that when they went to bed she would feel as if she were committing adultery. It hadn’t been like that at all. She didn’t feel as if she had been unfaithful to Scott, even though she still felt far more married to him than she did to Lewis. As his weight remained comfortably on top of her and his breathing subsided, she wondered if it was because, despite all his care and tenderness, she had not been brought remotely close to orgasm. It was as if, for her, physical delight and Scott were so inextricably bound together, her subconscious mind would not allow her to respond in the same manner to other hands, no matter how familiar those hands had once been. Or how much loved.
At the thought of Scott a pang of grief stabbed through her. Scott… She needed him so much. He always knew exactly what she was thinking; he was always so supportive to her, always so loving, always able to make her laugh and see things in perspective.
Lewis moved his head and brushed his lips against her cheek. She stirred, and though he did not read it as such, it was a movement of protest. He merely thought that his weight had become too much for her and he rolled off her and on to his back, sliding his arm beneath her shoulders.
‘I love you,’ he said, his voice heavy with physical satisfaction and with overwhelming tiredness. ‘And tomorrow will be even better, my love. I promise.’
She didn’t say anything in return. She couldn’t. She simply lay close beside him until he fell asleep and then turned on her side, waiting for the morning.
When he awoke he lay utterly rigid, sweat breaking out on his forehead, his eyes darting from one corner of the ceiling to another as he tried desperately to reorientate himself.
‘It’s all right,’ she said gently, reassuring him. ‘You’re in America and we’re at a hotel at Yosemite, remember?’
Slowly he relaxed. ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice slightly unsteady. ‘Of course we are. I’m sorry, Abbra, but just for a moment…’
‘I know.’ His doctors had told her about the nightmares, of how, even if he didn’t wake in the night screaming, he woke in the morning bathed in perspiration, certain he was still in Vietnam, his changed surroundings were simply a change of prison.
He shuddered and wiped a hand across his eyes and then said with a great effort at normality, ‘What is it we’re going to do today. Visit Yosemite Valley? Or drive up and visit Glacier Point?’
She sat up and swung her legs to the carpeted floor. ‘I need to talk to you a little while, Lewis,’ she said, uncomfortably aware of her nakedness in a way she had not been the previous night. She reached for her negligee and slipped her arms into the batwing sleeves. ‘So much has happened since you were captured. For me as well as for you.’
She rose to her feet, tying the ribbons on her negligee into a bow at her throat before turning to face him.
He had pushed himself up against the pillows. He was still naked, and in the early morning sunshine she could see that his chest and shoulders were already beginning to build up the muscle they had lost. In another few months he would be nearly as broad-chested and as toughly built as he had been when she had first met him.
She thought she saw a look of panic dart through his eyes, and then he had himself perfectly in control. ‘You mean about what happened after you had thought I was dead,’ he said sombrely.
She nodded. She had been wrong in assuming that it had not occurred to him that there might have been other men in the years when she had believed herself to be a widow.
‘Yes.’ Her lips were so dry that she could hardly force the words past them, but she had to continue. ‘I thought you were dead,’ she said quietly. ‘However you feel about what I am going to tell you, you must remember that, Lewis. I never even looked at another man all the months that I believed you to be alive.’
His eyes held hers, so dark that it was almost impossible to read any emotion in their gold-flecked depths. ‘You had an affair?’ he said briefly.
She nodded and he abruptly swung his legs from the bed, sitting with his terribly mutilated back towards her, not moving.
After a long moment he said, ‘When they told me I’d been listed as KIA, I knew… I realized there was such a possibility.’ He rose slowly to his feet and faced her, as oblivious of his nakedness as she had been conscious of hers. ‘It doesn’t matter to me, Abbra. I understand. Christ, how could I not understand. What is in the past is in the past. It doesn’t need to affect us anymore…’
‘But it does!’ He was moving towards her and she knew that she had to tell him before he touched her, before he held her close in his arms. ‘I … we …’ The tears were spilling down her face now, and she couldn’t stop them. ‘We married, Lewis! I thought you were dead and … oh, God, I can’t bear it! I can’t bear hurting you like this! If only I hadn’t been told that you were dead! If only I hadn’t believed that I would never see you again, not ever!’
He had stopped moving. He had begun to pant, to hyperventilate. His lips had gone white, and she thought he was going to faint.
‘Lewis!’ She rushed towards him, seizing hold of him, knowing that she had been a fool to have believed that she could handle such a nightmare situation by herself. ‘Lewis, please don’t be ill! I’ve told you like this, myself, because I didn’t want a stranger to tell you! Because I still love you! I still care for you!’
He rocked slightly on his heels and then his breathing began to steady as he inhaled deeply through flared nostrils.
‘You love me? You married him only because you thought I was dead?’
‘Yes! Yes!’ Surely it was true. She couldn’t possibly have married Scott if she had believed Lewis was still alive. And she did love him. She had always loved him.
With slow deliberation he removed her hands from his arms and walked a little way towards the window, looking out over a lands
cape of mountains and forest. When at last he turned to her, it seemed that the lines on his face furrowing his brow and running from nose to mouth were etched a little deeper. He was looking nearly as haggard as he had the day he had landed at Travis Air Force Base.
He forced a small, comforting smile. ‘Then that’s all that matters. The marriage can’t be valid. You’re still my wife, not his.’
She knew that he meant to be comforting. He believed that he had heard the worst news possible and had survived it. At the thought of what was still to come, tears rained down her face, spilling on to her hands, on to her negligee.
‘Lewis, I …’
At her continuing distress his eyes darkened in concern. ‘What is it? Is the guy threatening you? Insisting that you return to him?’
She shook her head, struggling for the right words and failing to find them.
‘Where is he now? Hasn’t someone spoken with him and explained the situation? Hell, who is he? Is he someone you met through your writing?’
She shook her head again, knowing that the most terrible moment of her life was upon her. ‘No.’ she said, and she was no longer crying. She was far, far beyond tears. ‘No, it isn’t someone you don’t know, Lewis.’ Her eyes held his, filled with unspeakable pain, and his eyes returned her gaze, bewildered and perplexed. With a slight, almost inconsequential motion of her hand, she said simply, ‘It’s Scott. I fell in love with Scott.’
His legs buckled, and as she rushed towards him, he thrust her violently away, staggering towards the bed.
‘Jesus Christ!’ That was all she could hear him say ‘Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!’
He had pushed her with such force that she stumbled and fell, sprawling on the floor. She crawled to her feet, her breath coming in harsh gasps.
‘Lewis! Please! Lewis!’
She reached a hand up towards him, and he grasped hold of it, pulling her up on the bed beside him, burying his face in her neck.
‘Oh, my sweet Jesus, Abbra!’ He was sobbing as she was now sobbing. ‘Did you think you could stay married to me through Scott? Is that how much you grieved?’
His words were incoherent, and she could barely grasp the sense of them. She knew only that his reaction was not remotely the reaction she had expected, and she was almost senseless with relief. Only slowly, as he continued to talk to her, rocking her against his chest, did she realize what it was he had chosen to believe.
‘Poor Scott! Christ, what he must be going through! Is that why he and Dad weren’t allowed to visit? Was the virus they were both supposed to have just a lie to keep us apart until you had broken the news to me?’
She nodded, wishing that it hadn’t been so easy, wishing he had realized that she had married Scott because she had fallen in love with him, that the possibility that she might still be in love with Scott had also occurred to him.
She put her hands against his chest, pushing herself gently away from him. ‘When I went through a marriage ceremony with Scott, I went through it because I had fallen in love with him,’ she said, choosing her words with great care so that he should not misunderstand her.
He rose to his feet and shrugged on a dark blue terry-cloth bathrobe. Then he lit a cigarette and walked with it over to the window, leaning against the window frame, staring out over the golden beauty of the mountains.
‘The North Vietnamese had a favourite way of conducting their interrogation sessions,’ he said, his tone of voice as unemotional as if he were asking her if they should breakfast in their room or downstairs in the hotel restaurant. ‘They would strap vine rope around my injured arm, just above the elbow, then the bite end would be passed over and around my right arm. When that was done they would throw me to the ground and roll me on my side, and then the vine rope would be pulled higher and tighter, drawing my elbows together behind my back. Within only seconds the pressure would be so great that my shoulders would lift out of their sockets…’
She cried out in anguish, but he did not pause or look towards her.
‘My chest would feel as if it were exploding and my ribs would project like drawn bowstrings. Then, if I were lucky, I would pass out. After I had passed out, water would be thrown on me to bring me back to consciousness. They would put their questions to me again, and I would refuse to answer them again, and then straps would be put around my ankles and knees and the loop from the arm straps would be passed around my neck. The loop from the leg straps was then pulled high, drawing my heels up towards my buttocks. And then the two straps were tied together.’
She was crying softly, but he still ignored her, saying conversationally, ‘At this point I would begin to vomit, and to choke on my vomit. I would lose control of my bladder and my bowels. I would no longer be Captain Lewis Ellis, I would be an animal. A thing. And do you know what kept me going through all those numberless sessions of torture? Through all the years of being kept for long periods in a cage measuring barely four feet by six and just high enough for me to sit in?’
He turned towards her, and in his eyes was a desperate unspoken plea. She understood then why he was telling her about what had happened to him, even though he knew that she had already been told by the doctors. It was his way of asking her to stay with him. To choose him and not Scott. It was his way of telling her how very desperately he needed her.
‘You did, Abbra,’ he said, and his voice had lost its indifference and was raw and hoarse. ‘They ruptured my eardrum, they beat me with bamboo rods, and through it all only one thing kept me sane. Knowing that you were here, in America, waiting for me. I lived because I knew that if I lived, I would have you to return to. You kept me alive, Abbra. No one and nothing else. Only you.’
As their eyes met and held, she felt her heart break. There was no decision for her to make. A decision could be made only if there was a choice of actions, and she saw now that there was no choice. There never had been a choice. Her duty and her loyalty lay with Lewis.
She crossed the space between them and slid her arms around him, knowing that by doing so she was saying goodbye to Scott and to Sanh and their loving, laughter-filled, joy-filled life together.
‘You did have me to return to, Lewis,’ she said thickly, laying her head against his chest so that he should not see the agony that was in her eyes. ‘You always will have me.’
Chapter Thirty-six
Although Scott had said she would have to make a decision, Lewis or himself, Abbra knew that deep down Scott had been sure there was only one decision she could possibly make. Their life together had a shape and substance to it that her life with Lewis had never possessed. They had believed themselves to be married for two and a half years, and with their adoption of Sanh they had become not merely a couple, but a family.
Fresh pain knifed through her. Sanh would have to remain with Scott. The adoption would probably have to be amended so that only Scott remained as his legal guardian. She was losing not only Scott, but the little boy who had become her son as well.
For the next four days she made a superhuman effort to overcome her anguish and to help Lewis adjust to the strangeness of being both free and a tourist. They rented horses at White Wolf and trekked the back trails of the High Sierra country at an easy pace. They fished for trout, and they drove up to Glacier Point.
When the time came for them to check out of their hotel and head back for the hospital, Lewis was reluctant.
‘It’s the same questions time and time again. What kind of military information had my captors sought from me? What kind of military information was already in their possession? Christ, it goes on and on!’
‘It won’t be for much longer,’ Abbra said, knowing that when his debriefing and his medical checks were complete, the real difficulties would start.
They wouldn’t be able to live in California. She wouldn’t be able to survive knowing that Scott and Sanh were only a car ride away from her. And once Lewis was released from the hospital, he would no longer be protected from the publi
city, publicity that would centre, not around his curiosity value as a POW who had been released in a propaganda gesture by the North Vietnamese, but around the mistaken notification of his death and his wife’s subsequent marriage to his football superstar younger brother.
‘You’re crazy! I don’t behave you! I won’t believe you!’ Scott shouted through the telephone to her. ‘Jesus God! I knew I shouldn’t have let you break the news to him alone!’
‘My decision has nothing to do with my having broken the news to him by myself,’ she said, gripping the telephone receiver so tightly that her knuckles were white. ‘It is simply that it is the only decision that can be made. If you knew what he has suffered, Scott…’
‘Christ, I’ve every sympathy with what he’s suffered, but it doesn’t mean that you have to return to him! Not when you are no longer in love with him, and you aren’t in love with him, are you?’
It was a question she had known that he was going to throw at her. ‘I still love him …’ she began steadfastly.
‘That doesn’t answer my question.’ His voice was remorseless. ‘Loving someone and being in love with them are two very different things. I love Lewis. He’s my brother. And that’s how I believe you love him now. As a brother. But you’re not in love with him anymore. You can’t be, because you’re in love with me.’
There wasn’t a shred of doubt in his voice, and she knew that there was no reason for any. Everything he had said was true. But she wasn’t going to change her mind about staying with Lewis. She couldn’t. If she did, she would never be able to live with herself.
‘I’ve made up my mind,’ she said, and in her soft, smoky voice was the stubbornness that was characteristic of her.
Hearing it, his own voice took on a note of desperation. ‘You have to change it, Abbra! You can’t leave Sanh and me. We’re a family, for God’s sake! You were never a family with Lewis. You had a total of eight days together as man and wife. Christ, Abbra! You barely know Lewis!’
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