by Daphne Clair
All the furniture in the living room was in place now; and the two men were engaged in placing picture hooks and hanging pictures, with advice from the women.
A knock on the door arrested their attention, and Alex turned and said, 'See who it is, someone, please.'
Stacey, at the moment not engaged in holding a picture or assessing whether one was hanging straight, went to the door.
Roger Pearce was standing there.
'Hallo,' he said. 'I thought Alex might do with some help today. He told me he was moving in.'
'Come in, Mr Pearce. We're all helping, but I'm sure another pair of hands won't come amiss.'
She noticed the warmth with which he greeted her mother, and glanced at Alex to see if he was watching, but after a quick, 'Hallo, Roger, good of you to offer,' when the other man explained his presence, he returned to the task in hand, and a few minutes later they had lunch.
Roger happily helped Helen to find cupboards for kitchenware, plates and cutlery, while Stacey helped Alex tackle the last job of all, the arranging of his books. As well as the shelves in his bedroom, there was a substantial set of bookshelves along one wall of the living room, and about a dozen boxes waited to be unpacked on the floor.
Stacey was so interested in some of them, stopping work to ask where Alex had bought them, or discuss the contents, that they were not even half-way through the task when Helen and Roger came out of the kitchen, having disposed of all the kitchen utensils quite satisfactorily.
Fergus had left a few minutes before, as he had a date with Tricia to go to a barbecue tea.
'Why not stop now and come back to my place for a cup of tea and something to eat?' asked Roger. Pausing with a book in his hand, Alex said, 'I'd like to finish this first, there's not much more, really, and it's the last job to be done. Why don't you take Helen along, and we'll follow later.'
Stacey looked at Alex in surprise, but he had turned away to put the book on a shelf. Roger looked pleased, and her mother had a carefully blank look on her face as they went out together.
Alex glanced after them, with amusement, which puzzled Stacey considerably.
They worked on with fewer interruptions, now, and soon the shelves were almost filled. Alex turned to a pile of books he had put aside for the bedroom, and a couple of boxes which had not been opened.
'All these for upstairs, I think,' he said. 'If I take the boxes, can you manage to carry those books?'
Stacey assured him she could, and picked them up.
In his bedroom, he dumped the boxes on to the floor, and she dropped the books on to the bed.
Alex opened the first box, and she handed books to him while he arranged them on the shelves. She was interested to see his choice of books to keep by him. They included a few volumes of poems, some art books, a few vintage thrillers, some bound magazines and the book of Pacific poems she had obtained for him. There was a red-leather-bound Bible and some anthologies of short stories.
She opened the second box as he was putting the last of the books on the bed into their places. There was something else in it besides books—a large photograph, mounted. Stacey pulled it out, and saw the picture of a young woman, pretty, black-haired and smiling; Her hair-style looked just slightly out of date, but she was a remarkably pretty girl.
Alex turned and came close and took it from her.
'So that's where I packed it,' he said. 'I couldn't remember where I had put it.'
He was so casual, it didn't seem at all impertinent to ask the question, as he turned and stood the photograph on his dressing-table.
'Who is she?'Stacey asked.
He turned and looked at her. 'That's Gwen,' he said. 'My wife.'
CHAPTER ELEVEN
For a crazy moment, she wondered if he was joking. Then,-as he turned and straightened some books on the shelf in front of him, changing their order, she said, almost choking on the words. 'I thought you weren't married.'
'That's right,' he said calmly. 'Gwen died, three years after we were married. There were no children—she was pregnant at the time. I don't broadcast the fact that I'm a widower. It doesn't seem to me to be the sort of thing I need to tell everyone.'
'No, of course not,' said Stacey, still inwardly reeling.
Alex went on with his task, and she automatically handed him some more books from the box. Her mind went back to a conversation she had had with him some time ago, and her cheeks burned as she recalled that she had accused him of having no knowledge of love or grief. As she handed him the last few books and straightened up, she said, 'Alex—I said some dreadful things to you once—that you didn't know about love, or—or grief. I'm sorry.'
He turned and gave her a brief smile. 'Don't worry about it,' he said. 'You weren't to know. And I probably deserved it for not minding my own business. And maybe you can learn something from the experience.'
'Like not to make silly assumptions about people?'
He turned and gently held her shoulders in his hands.
'Like not making assumptions. Like believing in me.'
That seemed an odd thing to say. His hands on her arms disturbed her in a way she didn't—dared not— want.
'Your mother knew,' he said, answering an unasked question.
She remembered him saying that they had much in common. He was looking at her with a rather speculative air, and because it made her uneasy she turned away, and looked at the photograph of his wife, now standing on the dressing-table.
'She was very pretty,' she said. 'She looks nice.'
'She was,' he answered quietly. 'Pretty, and nice. I loved her very much—we had a good marriage for three years, and then she was killed in a car accident. For a long time, I wished that I'd been in the car with her. It seemed easier to be dead than to go on living without her.' He paused. 'I expect you know what I mean.'
'Yes,' she agreed softly. 'But you don't feel like that now.'
It was not a question, because she knew of the zest for life in him, the laughter that so often showed in his eyes, even though he didn't laugh aloud. And she strongly suspected that a new love had supplanted the old.
'No,' he said. 'Memories can embitter—or inspire. I realised some time ago that it was no compliment to Gwen's memory to allow her death to turn me into half the man I was with her. Grief doesn't die, but it can be transformed into something more—constructive.'
She turned to face him. 'You put things very well,' she said. 'My mother tried to tell me something like that, when David died. But I didn't understand, then.'
'Perhaps you were too young.'
'Perhaps. At first, I suppose I was bitter—I felt it was so unfair. David was young, and full of life—he laughed a lot, too,' she added, flicking a glance at him, and then turning away. She looked again at the photograph of nice, pretty Gwen, who had died too young, and was pierced with grief and pain for Alex, as well as herself. 'Oh, Alex,' she sighed in sudden anguish. 'When does it stop hurting?'
His arms came round her in a gentle embrace. 'Perhaps when you love another man as much as you loved him,' he said.
'I've tried,' she said in despair. 'I've tried! Graeme— I thought that he—but it's no use.'
'You're not going to marry him.'
Mutely she shook her head.
'And Gideon Newnes? Where does he come in?'
Surprised, she lifted her head from its resting place against his chest. 'Gideon? Nowhere! He was just filling in time between voyages.'
She drew away from him, and he let her go.
'And what were you doing? You weren't serious either?'
'No. I was finding a new friend. Just a friend.'
'You mean you weren't "trying"?'
'Oh, you make me sound like a man-chaser!'
'I don't mean to. It was your own word.'
'Gideon isn't husband material,' she said positively, almost smiling at the idea. 'Not for me, anyway.'
'But when you met him, you gave Graeme his conge.'
'It wasn't like that
!' she protested.
Alex picked up a book, absently studying its binding.
'Sorry. Was Newnes too old for "husband material", Stacey?' he asked almost idly.
'No! I don't even know Gideon's age. I guess he must be in his late thirties,' she added thoughtfully, recalling what she knew of his career. 'But that has nothing to do with it. We just didn't have that kind of relationship. If we had, his age wouldn't have mattered in the least.'
'You don't think age differences are important in marriage?'
'No. Oh, perhaps there could be some difficulties if the difference were a vast one.'
'What would you call a vast difference?' he asked as he dropped the book on the bed, and stood looking down at its cover.
'Well,' she shrugged, 'thirty, forty or so years.'
He turned and smiled at her. 'That's what your mother thought—ten years or so makes little difference, then?'
She felt as though she had suddenly been thrown from a great height. 'Oh, you—you've discussed it, have you?' she asked, striving to sound normal and conversational, and thinking she only managed to sound inane.
'Once or twice. We have had some very interesting discussions, your mother and I.'
'Yes.' Once they had discussed her. Perhaps more than once. 'You've become quite close, haven't you?'
'Yes. Do you mind?'
'You've been good for my mother,' she said. 'She's more outgoing than she used to be, more confident.' She was trying to talk down an awful feeling of misery. They had discussed that eight years that lay between them, then. And if her mother thought it didn't matter, had Alex been hesitating because of it?
'Oh, I don't think I'm wholly responsible for that,' he was saying as he picked up the book off the bed and put it on the shelf.
'Don't you?' He was too modest, she thought. Anyone who was loved by a man like Alex would blossom —she couldn't help it. 'She's very fond of you,' she said.
'And of you,' he replied, looking at her somewhat quizzically.
And then she saw it all. They were hesitating because of her. She was a problem because she was on her mother's hands and conscience. Alex was probing about her men friends, finding out if she was likely to marry —and trying to discover her views on age differences, in case she disapproved her mother's choice, and caused her some heartache because of it.
They wanted her blessing. Well, they would get it, but it was hard to be direct about it until she was told in so many words what plans they had. There should, she supposed, be some subtle and tactful way of conveying her approval, but she couldn't think of any.
Alex made a movement towards her, but she forestalled him by picking up one of the empty boxes, and saying lightly, 'Well, we're all finished, aren't we?' and turning to precede him from the room and down the stairs.
She kept up a light chatter all the way down, because somehow it was important to keep her thoughts at bay, and talking was a useful way of doing it.
They stowed away the boxes, and Alex suggested that they should make themselves a drink of tea and go to collect her mother afterwards, as it was getting late.
Slightly surprised, Stacey agreed, because she was feeling slightly wrung, and didn't want to have to be polite to Roger Pearce. With Alex she could relax and not be expected to make small talk.
They sat at his small kitchen table and drank tea in silence, Stacey idly playing with her spoon, and fingering the chain about her neck as she often did, unconsciously.
She was surprised when a warm hand closed over her restless fingers, and pulled them down on to the table, to rest under it. Her gaze lifted in startled enquiry to Alex, and found him looking at her intently.
'Stacey,' he said quietly, 'will you tell me about David?'
For an instant everything in her recoiled. Then she discovered that she wanted to talk about David—to Alex. He would understand, she knew.
She told him how she and David had known each other since childhood, how being a few years older he had been one of the 'bigger boys', and only on the fringe of her world until they both attended the local college, and at a school dance, he had singled her out when she was only a fourth-former, and he one of the lordly sixth.
David was good-looking, popular and fun—moderately clever and destined to be a lawyer like his father. By the time she turned fifteen, he had left school and was attending university, but by then they both knew that when she was old enough, they wanted to be married.
His family moved, but David stayed on to complete his studies, and it seemed the natural thing that the room Mrs Coleman had let to boarders over the years should become his.
'Is that why you hated me having it?' Alex enquired softly.
'No, not really. We've often had guests staying in that room, since ‑'
His hand on hers tightened a fraction, and he said, 'So David was a childhood sweetheart?'
She grimaced at the phrase, but said, 'I suppose you could say so. I just knew that he was the one for me.'
'You were never interested in anyone else, at all?'
'Not really. There were other boys who wanted to take me out, but I was David's girl, and they knew it. And anyway'—she halted, and a rather wry little smile crossed her face—'I wouldn't have done anything to hurt him. Not after the first time.'
'The first time—what?'
'Oh,' she gave a little laugh, 'we had a slight quarrel about something—I don't remember what, now. And some boy asked me to go to the school dance with him, and I accepted. Because'—-remembered distress crossed her face—'David had sort of stormed away, and I wasn't sure he would come back to me—it was before he moved into our house. And I was very young. I suppose I wanted to show him—something.'
'Asserting your independence.'
'Yes. Anyway, the night before the dance, David rang, taking it for granted that we would be going to it together. He was so happy, and sweet. I hated telling him I couldn't go with him because I'd promised the other boy.'
'Did he apologise for "storming out" on you?'
'Oh, yes. David always apologised—that was one of the nice things about him. He wasn't perfect, but if he was in the Wrong he always would say so.'
'And what did he say when you said you'd accepted another invitation ?'
'Nothing. He said he hoped I would have a good time, and rang off.'
'But he was hurt?'
'Oh, yes. I knew that from his voice. And when he came to the dance ‑'
'He did go to it, then?'
'Yes,' she smiled. 'He brought one of the prettiest girls in the school. I was quite jealous, until he came and danced with me. He said I should have been his partner, and I should have trusted him.'
'Made you feel thoroughly guilty, in fact?' Alex smiled slightly.
'No! At least not intentionally. But I could see he was hurt. He didn't mean to make me feel guilty,' she reiterated with some indignation. 'David never nagged.'
'I wonder,' Alex mused, 'how he persuaded one of the prettiest girls in the school to stand up her partner for him?'
Stacey gaped. 'What do you mean?'
'Well, was the other girl likely to have been without a partner?'
'Well, of course. Not everyone came with someone. In fact, the teachers frowned on the idea. We were supposed to come separately, really. But of course they couldn't stop boys from escorting girls, and we all mingled at the dances.'
'And such a pretty girl wasn't escorted.' Without giving her time to reply, he asked, 'So you stuck to David from then on?'
'Yes. I didn't particularly like the other boy, anyway. At least, not as much as David.'
'And did he never look at another girl?'
'Not seriously. I was his girl,' she said proudly. 'And as soon as I left school, he gave me a ring.'
'And you went to work in a bookshop, and began saving for your hope-chest.'
She looked a little defensive. 'Yes, and I loved it. The money was good, too. We would have managed very well.'
'With you helping
him through university. You told me.'
'So I did. But then he got sick, and within a week he was gone—some form of meningitis, they said. So it was all for nothing, after all.'
They sat on in silence for a while, and Alex's thumb absently caressed her wrist, as he gazed down at their joined hands on the table.
'That painting in my—the spare room,' he said eventually. 'Did you do that for David?'
'Yes.' She looked up. 'When he came to live with us.'
'You must have others, besides the two or three I've seen scattered throughout your home.'
'Oh, yes, a few. But mostly I give them away.'
'Have you ever had an exhibition?'
'Good heavens, no!'
'Why so surprised? I'm no art expert, but Roger Pearce knows something about painting, and he thought the few of yours he saw when he was at your home were very good.'
'Did he? I didn't think he even looked at them.'
'He has. Several times.'
Stacey had not realised that Roger had been there several times. She had seen him there only twice, but presumably he had visited Alex on several occasions.
Alex said, 'I'm surprised your mother didn't mention it.'
So her mother had been there too.
'She didn't,' Stacey said. 'We'd better go and pick her up, hadn't we?' She moved her chair and stood up.
They stayed at Roger Pearce's place only a few minutes and then Alex drove them home, because Fergus had borrowed his mother's car.
'I'm planning a housewarming next Saturday evening,' he said as he left them. 'You're both invited, of course. And Fergus too.'
They murmured acceptance and went in.
Stacey decided to give the painting of his house, now finished, to Alex for a housewarming gift. She had it framed in natural wood which complemented the muted colours of the old, shabby house as it appeared in the picture. When she picked it up from the framers the day before the party, she was very pleased with the result.
She dressed carefully in a new figure-hugging sleeveless top in soft green with a hint of silver in it, and a softly flounced skirt, in darker green with a scattering of flowers. An unfastened matching jacket went over the top until she reached the house, but it was warm enough to discard that soon after she arrived.