Echoes of the Past

by Maggie Ford

  When he’d been well enough to go back home, she had been saved by having Hugh for company and had felt safe enough with him; he was so frail and in need of help that his nearest contact was to hold her hand and thank her for all the care she was lavishing on him.

  “I don’t deserve it,” he’d say. “I brought all this on myself.”

  He had seemed genuinely penitent. Gone was the old joie de vivre, the self-opinionated lusting after her, and she came to feel much more at ease with him.

  As much as his pitiful condition had wrung her heart, his return had lifted it. Under her care he had regained his health, strength, his good looks. He was still handsome, if in a pinched sort of way, as gaunt of cheek as Frank Sinatra – a heart-throb if ever there was one.

  It didn’t matter about Edwin’s threats to cast him out; she’d vowed to see Hugh well cared for. She’d vowed also never to do Edwin down, even if the temptation ever arose again, though she cared for Hugh more than he would ever realise, her heart filling with love for him every time she looked at him. So he was weak-willed – it only made her want to care for him all the more.

  Now it seemed that that temptation would never arise again as Hugh went gaily off to his new flat, seldom to come visiting. By September his visits could be numbered on the fingers of one hand.

  In October, however, Helen found him on her doorstep, Edwin having said he should have a break before the build-up to the Christmas rush.

  Edwin himself hardly felt the need for holidays, meaning that Helen either didn’t get one or else drove off taking the girls with her during summer or term breaks to the Lake District or some seaside town.

  “They need their holidays even if you don’t,” she’d told Edwin sharply more than once. He’d contrive to look penitent but add that he never minded her taking them and that they were company for each other. To which she’d retort that it would be nice to have him with her as well just once in a while.

  Hugh had surprised Helen by turning up at her home unannounced just prior to lunch.

  “Thought I’d pop over for a visit,” he said as he came in. “Hope you’re pleased to see me, Helen.”

  She told him she was, asking him if he would like to stay for some lunch, an invitation which he readily accepted.

  “In fact, I’m off to Malaga for a spot of relaxation for a week,” he said as Muriel took his coat. “Long time since I’ve been abroad. Catching a plane tomorrow morning… That’s what you should be doing,” he continued as Helen poured him a drink. “Catching a plane to somewhere hot and sunny.”

  Helen laughed as she sipped her own, but Hugh remained serious, staring into the whisky he had requested.

  “You’re too cooped up in this place. Edwin should be ashamed of himself, never taking you anywhere, much less abroad. Your whole life is wrapped up here with you going nowhere.”

  “I’ve got the children – that’s good enough for me.” She dismissed the accusation with a wave of the hand.

  But he was still teetering on the same subject by the time they sat down to the simple midday meal served by Mrs Cotterell of tomato soup, crusty bread, omelette, cherry cake and coffee, just for the two of them, since the girls were still at school.

  His grin mischievous, he gazed at her across the small conservatory table. “Tell you what, Helen, how about coming with me?”

  She stopped eating, “What? Oh, Hugh, don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I could do with some company.” He was still grinning but there was a meaningful light in his eyes even as he bantered, “You could stop me going off the rails with some unsavoury woman or other, or gambling again after all my vows never to gamble another penny as long as I’m working with Edwin. Come on, Helen, be my chaperone, eh?”

  All she could do was brush aside his jocularity with a violent shake of her head. “I’m happy enough where I am,” she lied and hurriedly waylaid the subject by asking how he was doing at the restaurant.

  He told her he was doing fine – surely she could see that by the nice car he’d arrived in? – but she could see he had something on his mind that, though it was unspoken, made her feel uneasy with him as they sat with their coffee.

  Despite his earlier contempt of the “catering trade,” as he’d called it years ago, Hugh seemed totally taken up with his new life. Over lunch, when she had managed to steer him from his earlier course, he had spoken of those who could be seen in Letts from time to time, usually having a late meal with friends after having been somewhere else – mostly famous names: Vincent Price, Joan Crawford, Tab Hunter, Anthony Newley, Russ Conway – he even mentioned Judy Garland, though Helen wondered if he had not made up that one – and Benny Hill quite regularly. Helen listened to it all with patience and relief while still marvelling at Hugh’s great change of heart about the reckless life he had previously enjoyed. Perhaps leopards did change their spots.

  Hugh had come to sit in the garden while Helen deadheaded some clumps of Michaelmas daisies in an attempt to escape the waning conversation and the feeling that she should be keeping it going.

  The late October sun was warm as any in September, though the clear skies indicated that tonight would be frosty, as it had been the previous evening. Autumn was pressing on. Totally at ease in a garden chair, taking in the rare warmth before the season really closed down around them, Hugh watched as she turned her attention to a couple of containers whose flagging plants needed lifting to make way for a few spring bulbs that her gardener had left over. Making no move to depart, he sat watching her as she bent to pull out the exhausted plants.

  “We have a man come in several times a week to do the hard work,” she explained, “but I enjoy getting my hand in as well.” She didn’t go so far as to say that gardening helped while away her days. It would have laid emphasis on her loneliness, and that was best avoided.

  “It’ll be Angel’s eleventh birthday in a few weeks’ time,” she told him. “We’re having a birthday party and I don’t want the children’s mothers looking out on a lot of messy old plant pots,” she added with a laugh, awkwardly aware of him watching her all the time she was working. Ever since she had known him he had watched her. She should be used to it by now but somehow she never could be. She stood up suddenly.

  “Stop it!” she scolded amiably.

  He was smiling at her. “Stop what?”

  “Staring at me. I can’t move anywhere without your eyes on me.”

  “It’s because I can’t take them off you. You should know that by now.”

  She stood gazing back at him. They were alone. Mrs Cotterell had gone home. Muriel, married last March, only came in twice a week. The girls were being picked up from school by a friend’s mother to have tea there. She’d take them and her daughter to dancing class and Helen would collect all three at seven, dropping off the friend. Edwin was in London, and would come home as and when he felt like it. She was used to it by now, but his absences had never lost their edge.

  “You’d best start thinking of leaving,” Helen retorted, “if you want to pack for your holiday.”

  He was still smiling. “That won’t take long. I prefer to stay here and drink you in.”

  “Don’t be silly!” She made to resume pulling out the dead plants.

  “It’s not silly to be in love with you.”

  Helen felt her heart leap. She kept her head bent over her work, unable to speak for the tight feeling in her chest and that awful sense of excitement threatening to suffocate her.

  She heard Hugh get out of his chair. She stood quite still as he came towards her. She didn’t move as his body touched hers and his hands came around to cup her breasts. It felt as though her loins were about to explode. It was a job to breathe.

  “Hugh…” It was part protest, part longing. She let the hand fork she’d been using fall from her grasp, heard it drop softly on to the soil. Now her breath returned, panting. His hands were like fire on her breasts.

  Her body was being borne without protest down on to the pa
tio, Hugh beside her, easing her skirt up past her thighs, slipping aside all that would restrict him. Seconds later he was inside her, her resolve, those vows of loyalty, that last brave vestige of self-will gone as her hips rose to meet him with a hunger that a long-standing sense of neglect had slowly and unconsciously built up bursting out of her. And all the time she heard his voice close to her ear: “I love you, Helen. I’ve always loved you. Always and always…”

  * * *

  It was over so quickly. As she stumbled up and away from him into the house, she was already sobbing. Her whole body shaking, she staggered on through the conservatory, the kitchen area, into the hall and up the stairs as fast as she could. Once in her bedroom she slammed the door behind her, locked it and threw herself on to her bed. It was a single bed these days; when Edwin was home it was at such odd times, he found it simpler not to disturb her. So often she’d told herself she had become used to that, that they had been married long enough for it not to matter any more and that first passion died as married life went on. Was it that deception that had promoted the moment of madness just gone by?

  Sickened by what she’d allowed to happen, she lay rigid on the bed, face down, ears keened for the slightest sound of Hugh coming upstairs after her. Her whole body trembled in case he tapped on her door pleading to be let in. She couldn’t let him in. She loathed herself. How could she have let him seduce her? It was awful.

  For a while there was nothing. Was he at this moment tiptoeing up the stairs? Would she hear his voice any minute now whispering that he was sorry, he didn’t know how it had happened and could she ever forgive him? But there was only total silence. Birds could be heard singing in the garden but that was all. Where was he? What was he doing?

  There came the sound of a car. Scrambling up, Helen ran to the window in time to see Hugh’s vehicle belting off down the driveway, turning left, obviously back to London, the squeal from its tyres virtually advertising to her the anger he was feeling. Was it directed at himself or her? Was he too suffering remorse at what had happened? Perhaps she would find out eventually, now that he was gone. She recalled the need she’d had to succumb to him even as she feared any repetition of it.

  Nineteen

  Hugh’s holiday in southern Spain had been weeks ago.

  He was back with Edwin, and obviously still pleasing him, but for her there was only silence. He hadn’t even put in an appearance for Angel’s eleventh birthday nor sent any word of apology for his absence. Was it that he felt too ashamed?

  “Will Hugh be coming?” she had casually asked Edwin and he had shaken his head in all innocence.

  “You know him,” he’d said. “Never comfortable with kids. I expect he’s off somewhere enjoying himself for the day.” Edwin had made a point of coming home this Tuesday, leaving Letts in the capable hands of his staff. “So long as he’s not gambling away all he’s made this year and provided he’s sober by the weekend.”

  It was obvious that Hugh still liked his drink, but Helen had wanted to keep the conversation going. “Does he still gamble a lot?”

  Edwin took a sip of the non-alcoholic punch provided for the young guests. “Afraid so,” he’d said ruefully. “As for drink, there are times when he’s had too much to be of any real help to me. I knew all those good intentions of his would go out of the window after a while. But with Christmas three weeks off, I need him to be there – need his help, such as it is. He’s like my father, can charm birds off a bush.”

  How true, she’d thought, but Edwin had continued bemoaning his lot.

  “The customers like him and that goes a long way to making Letts a place to come to. The trouble is I never feel I can trust him. At any time I expect him to come in dead drunk or come begging me to pay some gambling debt, or even to flit off to try his hand at acting again, bloody idiot!”

  To all this, she’d said nothing. She had her suspicions as to why Hugh was drinking. Perhaps like her he hadn’t been able to get that episode in October in the garden out of his mind. Sometimes it seemed like a dream, as though it had never taken place or had happened to someone else. Other times she recalled it so clearly that her insides cringed, her nerves crawling like tiny beetles under her skin at the thought of herself allowing such a thing to happen.

  Hugh hadn’t even bothered to see her since. Even if he had come back begging her to renew that moment of passion she might have been able to face it better, have had the opportunity to right a wrong by rejecting him. But the fact that he’d not even come near her made her feel cheap, used, wounded and humiliated.

  “I’ve always loved you, always,” he had said, but it was a funny way of showing it. No, not funny – it was a wicked lie a casual lover would tell any of his conquests. Did he know, or even care how wretched he had left her?

  * * *

  Sunday evening Hugh let himself out of his small but well-appointed Mayfair flat and went down one flight of stairs to the flat below. Edwin could do without him tonight.

  At least a couple of evenings a week he’d pop down to his neighbours, Julian and Jacqueline Hampton, who with half a dozen other friends would hold a quiet little party talking theatre and art and philosophy. There in a haze of well-being, smoking pot, he’d forget the troubles of the world. It wasn’t easy to gloss over the failure he was. To everyone he was hail-fellow-well-met but inside he ached. He ached for the theatre, the great name he would never have, money of his own – lots of it in unlimited supply rather than what came from that bloody restaurant business, paltry and always feeling to him like a hand-out rather than his due. He ached to have been wealthy enough to be able to sweep Helen off her feet, away from Edwin who’d pinched her from him in the first place.

  At the same time he wanted to forget the way she’d willingly let him have her only to look at him when they’d finished as though he’d sickened her to her very core, as though she saw herself as having been raped, even though she had done it with as much pleasure as he had.

  The prig. He would never forget nor forgive her that look. Way back in October last year that had been, yet five months later it was still there in his mind. So he hadn’t gone near her since. Let her stew, came the resolve, let her long for it until it screwed up her loins. But it didn’t stop him thinking about her, wanting more of her.

  Pleasantly foggy with all that grass he would tell his friends all about her and how he felt towards her, and they commiserated with him, said they understood his feelings. That was nice. He enjoyed their company. They were the best friends he’d ever had. And there was a certain Ursula there, and in a sweet, tender, hash-invoked haze she and he would make love, she making up for Helen. Yet even as he took his fill he knew the time would come when he’d have to see Helen again no matter how much he enjoyed this new flame.

  * * *

  Christmas and New Year had come and gone with not a peep from Hugh. She wasn’t going to demean herself by asking after him or sending a message. That way if he did turn up she could have the luxury of giving him his marching orders.

  It was now March and still she felt unclean – would often look at Edwin and wonder how he’d react if he knew about what she and Hugh had done. Even after all this time, guilt and remorse, like all things locked away, begged for release until they threatened to consume her.

  “You’re not looking at all well these days,” taxed Edwin. “All that driving up to London every other day this winter to take care of your father has taken it out of you.”

  Dad had gone down with bronchitis yet again, each winter helping to bring him a little lower in health. This year there had been another threat of bronchial pneumonia, though this time his doctor had helped him evade going into hospital. But Helen had still wanted to be with her father as much as possible. There was little to keep her at home, and the girls were quite old enough now to be left with Mrs Cotterell or Muriel.

  Besides, it took her mind off other things, helped stop her wondering what Hugh was doing at that precise moment, helped keep at bay the
self-loathing that had become her constant companion, the knowledge that at any time Hugh could pop up out of the blue to turn her insides to jelly and sweep aside her brave vows to send him packing. Deny it though she might, that sunny October afternoon had been the most wonderful moment of her life. Five months later she could still feel his hands on her, the way he’d borne her to the ground, the way he’d taken her, and despite herself her stomach would chum and she would long to experience it all over again. The thought consumed her constantly. Would she be able to resist him a next time?

  These past months she had striven to bury such introspections in merciless rounds of activity, visiting her father more than she need, seeing more of her friend, Carolyn, taking an intense interest in church and village events – it didn’t eradicate it as much as she’d have liked, but it helped.

  Today she was keeping the thoughts at bay with the usual conducting of Angel and Gina to their local twice-a-week dance classes. They were presently taking part in rehearsals for a show for Easter.

  The girls having changed into their leotards, Helen lingered as they took their places in the group lined up in rows before their tutor, Jeannette Sellers, a gifted ex-dancer of around thirty-five who seemed able to work miracles with the most reluctant or podgy pupil. This was the older group, which included a couple of boys. The rest were girls ranging from nine to seventeen, and a second group of tots were in the care of a girl of around eighteen.

  The hall was alive with chatter as youngsters changed into leotards, attentive but superfluous mothers clutching items of outdoor clothing, collecting up bits and pieces and trying to be helpful but really getting in the way. They were ignored by their offspring, who were only too eager to be free of them for the next two hours while they dedicated themselves to their teacher, her word now law.