Wanting Page 11

  ‘Heather darling, I was wondering if you could spare me a few days,’ her aunt asked her. ‘Your uncle hasn’t been well. It’s this nasty ‘flu epidemic that’s been going round, and Dr Barnes says he’s got to spend at least a week in bed. Neil’s doing his best at the office, of course, but the work is piling up and I’ve promised I’ll help out if I can. The only problem is, who is going to look after your uncle?’

  Heather’s uncle owned the local estate agents firm, and Neil was his junior partner. Before the children had come along, her aunt had worked in the business and still occasionally lent a hand when things got busy. ‘With spring just round the corner it’s one of our busiest times,’ she heard her aunt saying worriedly. ‘I just don’t know what we’re going to do if you can’t come.’

  In all the years she had lived with them this was the first time Heather had heard anything approaching panic in her placid aunt’s voice, and she wondered wryly if she really was needed. She promised to think about it and let her aunt have her answer the following day. Before she committed herself she would phone Neil and find out just what was going on. She rang the office several times, but on each occasion only got the answering service which seemed to confirm her aunt’s comments. When Jennifer came home, she looked so genuinely surprised and worried that Heather felt guilty for even thinking of doubting her family.

  ‘Look, Terry and I are going out to a charity do tonight. Why don’t you come with us? You haven’t been out once since you got back,’ Jennifer scolded her. ‘And if you’re going to bury yourself in the country you ought to have at least one brief fling before you go. Believe me, Heather,’ she added seriously, ‘I have been there—I understand how much you want to be on your own, but it won’t do any good. In fact…’ she bit her lip and then admitted wryly, ‘I’ve already been asked by at least half a dozen people at work if it’s true that you and Race have a thing going. Once it gets out that you’re back in London, hiding yourself away, you can imagine the conclusions that will be drawn, and Race is bound….’

  ‘To guess how I feel about him?’ Heather interposed bitterly. ‘Yes, you’re right, Jen. Does anyone know about… that we….’

  ‘No,’ Jennifer assured her. ‘Word has it that Race is abroad somewhere working on his latest book—he owns a villa in the Cayman Islands, apparently. There have been murmurs that you might be out there with him. The way he looked at you at the do we had wasn’t exactly something you could miss, but I’ve dropped hints that you’ve been on a modelling trip.’

  Jennifer was right. If people were already gossiping about her and Race, if she continued to hide herself away they could guess that he had ditched her, and her pride couldn’t endure the speculation that would follow.

  The charity ball was being held at the Dorchester, and Heather dressed accordingly in an Anthony Price gown—there was really no other way to describe it—that she had modelled for him for an advertising feature, and which he had later sold to her at cost price. Even then it had been horrendously expensive, and as she was zipping it up she had a moment’s bitter memory of Race calling her ‘gypsy girl’, which she banished firmly as she studied her reflection and tried not to think of how much she deserved the title in this dress of rich gold satin with its low-cut bodice that moulded her breasts, the off-the-shoulder sleeves trimmed lavishly with écru lace bows which matched the trim round the hem.

  She had swept her hair to one side and secured it with a gold comb, using her model-girl skill to emphasise her high cheekbones and the depth and size of her eyes. When she had finished she looked every inch the wild gypsy girl, and Jennifer’s eyes widened in admiration as she walked in to see if she was ready.

  ‘Wow,’ she exclaimed, ‘talk about the lord and the lady! All we need is for some dashing young Lochinvar to sweep you off on his steed….’

  ‘Not at the Dorchester,’ Heather told her dryly. ‘What time is the taxi due to arrive?’

  It arrived five minutes later, having already collected Terry who greeted them both with a warm smile, but the kiss he bestowed on Jennifer was anything but friendly, Heather thought, watching them with a mixture of envy and amusement.

  The ballroom was packed with famous faces; Heather recognised a score of fellow models and half the media world in its differing guises, plus an assortment of peers and politicians as well as famous names from the world of commerce.

  She danced in turn with a baronet, a pop singer and a captain of industry, any one of whom would have been delighted to do more than simply dance, but Heather kept them all at bay with her normal cool smile until the moment she turned and saw Race watching her not three yards away, his eyes mocking her as they slid indolently over her body. In a dream she saw him walk towards her, conscious of Jennifer hurrying to her side, Terry in tow, and her escort looking none too pleased at Race’s approach. A newspaper gossip columnist she had recognised was watching them, and Heather felt her heart thud in mingled pain and pleasure as she studied Race; evening clothes suited him, but then what didn’t? Tonight he looked sleek and debonair, totally at home in his surroundings, the blonde girl he was partnering clinging possessively to his arm as they approached.

  ‘Hello, gypsy lady.’ No one apart from themselves could know the meaning of his words, no one apart from herself could know the pain they caused her. She forced herself to smile, conscious of exploding flashlights and interested glances. Jenny was right, she and Race were in danger of becoming a gossip item.

  ‘Hello, Race.’ Somehow she managed to stay cool, extending her hand in a perfunctory greeting, introducing him to her escort, acknowledging his introduction to the simpering blonde she suddenly hated with white-hot searing jealousy, especially when the sickly-sweet voice cooed softly, ‘Darling, you promised me we wouldn’t need to stay long. I want to go home… with you, darling.’

  Red lips pouted and Heather felt a wave of nausea attack her as she looked down into the other girl’s face. Five foot two and as fragile as Dresden—of course!

  ‘I’ll bet she isn’t a virgin.’ Heather wasn’t aware that she had muttered the words, until she saw Race’s eyebrows rise.

  ‘No,’ he agreed equably, adding with devastating cruelty, ‘thank God.’

  Telling herself that she was lucky that no one else had been close enough to overhear the small exchange, Heather let her partner lead her back to the dance floor. All she wanted to do was to run, to be somewhere alone, but pride kept her where she was, talking, dancing, drinking and pretending to eat until she could reasonably go home.

  She was in bed when Jennifer returned, and Heather suppressed a small stab of envy when she saw her cousin’s flushed, happy face.

  ‘Terry’s proposed,’ she announced happily. ‘Oh, Heather, I never thought he would! I’m so happy I’m going to cry,’ she moaned, promptly doing exactly that.’

  ‘That’s not happiness, it’s champagne,’ Heather told her pithily, softening her words with a swift hug. Her own mind was made up. Now that she knew Race was back in London she must leave. Her aunt’s plea for help gave her the ideal, genuine excuse.

  She told Jennifer over breakfast—a breakfast she felt totally unable to eat. She had felt most unwell when she woke up and had put it down to a surfeit of nervous dread and too much alcohol the previous night. Now she felt almost light-headed.

  She left London at lunchtime, having decided that once her uncle was well she was going to ask him to find her a small house. She had enough money not to need to work, but she had her book to occupy her mind and she had always been interested in antiques, perhaps she might even buy herself a small business.

  Neil was at the station to meet her, enveloping her in a hard hug. Although smaller than she was in their early teens, the twins had both overtaken her. Neil was six foot two, and he laughed as he swung her off the ground, pulling her hair which she had confined in a long plait.

  ‘You’ve lost weight,’ he told her accusingly as he opened the car door. ‘Something wrong?’

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bsp; She and Neil had always been particularly close. It was he who had started her off on her modelling career and who had encouraged her with her writing. Despite his outer ruggedness, Neil was extremely sensitive to other people’s emotional needs, and Heather longed to pour her misery out to him, to tell him how she felt, but pride restrained her. She had left all that behind in London, and had no intention of resurrecting it either.

  ‘I’m just worried about Uncle Roy,’ she fibbed, her comment not entirely untrue. She was worried about her uncle.

  ‘Umm, this bug’s hit him hard,’ Neil admitted, suddenly grave. ‘It’s time he was thinking of retiring, but you know what he’s like. Anyway, Dr Barnes has told him there’s no question of him coming back to work yet. I think we ought to take on another partner, but I’ll have to talk him round to it. We’re run off our feet at the moment.’

  ‘Well, anything I can do to help,’ Heather assured him. ‘Aunt Lydia is going to help out in the office, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yep, Ma’s a wonder. She knows all the ropes, and it’s great having someone reliable to take people on viewing expeditions. Meredew’s, the electronics people, have opened a new factory in Tytherton, and we’ve been inundated with enquiries from their people for property. In fact we’re having what you might call a mini-boom.’

  Neil enjoyed his work, and Heather forgot her troubles long enough to laugh at his feeling description of a couple who had assured him that their house was worth twice as much as the value he had placed upon it.

  ‘Here we are.’

  Her aunt and uncle lived in the edge of a small Cotswold village in a red-brick Queen Anne house which had once been the Vicarage. Heather loved the house and could still vividly remember the first time she had seen it after her parents’ death. She had arrived on a wet, cold day, and the house had warmed her with its rosy glow, holding out welcoming arms to enfold her, just as her aunt had done.

  Once again she found the same welcome, hugging her small aunt back enthusiastically. ‘Jenny told me what she did, and I gave her a real telling off for it,’ Lydia told her frankly, when Neil had gone to garage the car. ‘She isn’t like you, Heather, she doesn’t think before she acts. How are you? All right?’

  ‘Shaken and bruised,’ Heather admitted, not able to lie to her aunt. ‘I fell for him, and hard. He wanted me…. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t enough….’

  There was a degree of frankness between them that Heather cherished. She had always been able to talk to her aunt, but it was not her way to make use of anyone else as a confidante, and she came to an abrupt halt, colouring as she realised how much she was giving away.

  ‘It’s all right, Heather, I do understand….’ her aunt assured her. ‘I appreciate that it sounds trite, but I was young once myself, and very, very deeply in love—madly in love, was I suppose the right term. It was before I met your uncle. He, John, was an airman at one of the local bases. It was towards the end of the war, and a hectic sense of urgency it isn’t easy to describe nowadays possessed us all. I loved him and I wanted him,’ she told Heather simply, ‘and I’ve never been sorry or guilty about what we shared, although I suppose it could have been different if….’ She broke off to chastise her son as he came into the immaculate kitchen without wiping his feet, accepting Heather’s offer of taking her uncle a cup of tea, gratefully, as the telephone started to ring.

  Any doubts she might have had about being needed at home were banished when Heather saw how fragile her uncle looked. He greeted her with a beam, patting the chair at the side of his bed. ‘At last, someone who’ll have a few minutes to talk to me. How are you, lass?’

  ‘Fine,’ Heather assured him huskily. ‘Unlike you. You’ve been working too hard.’

  ‘Who told you that? Dr Barnes?’ He’s an old woman, always has been. I’d feel a lot better if I could get up and see what young Neil’s doing,’ he grumbled, as Heather plumped his pillows and sat with him while he drank his tea.

  Later when they were alone she admitted to Neil how shocked she had been to see how frail his father was.

  ‘Oh, he’s tougher than he looks,’ Neil assured her. ‘He’s over the worst of it now. You worry too much,’ he told her gently, ‘you always did. I can still remember the way you broke your heart over that blackbird the cat got.’

  Heather could remember the incident vividly. The family’s cat had brought home a young blackbird with a broken wing. At her insistence Neil had rescued it and they had kept the bird in a shoe box in the greenhouse. Every day Heather had urged it to get better, but every day it had grown a little more weak, until one morning she had found it stiff and cold. Neil had found her, crying as though her heart would break, and she hadn’t been able to explain to him that her grief wasn’t entirely for the bird. His death had come too soon after the loss of her parents for her to bear it with equanimity, and it had seemed to her that no sooner did she love something than it was taken away from her. She had grown obsessive about her new-found family, fearing almost with every breath she took that something might happen to them, but of course it hadn’t, and gradually she had learned to accept.

  ‘You were always such a passionate little thing,’ Neil teased, startling her with his observation. She had always thought of herself as cool and controlled. ‘Perhaps not outwardly,’ he added, watching her, ‘but inside, in there.’ He tapped her chest lightly, and then abandoning all pretence said quietly, ‘Heather, what’s wrong?—and don’t fob me off, I know it isn’t just Pa. Something’s wrong. What is it? A man?’

  She couldn’t tell him. She shook her head, half blinded with tears, glad of her aunt’s appearance to bring an end to their conversation.

  Within a week of her arrival her uncle was well on the road to recovery, but Heather felt consistently ill. She was tired all the time and suffered from recurring bouts of nausea, her mind and body so lethargic that everything was an effort.

  One morning when she had overslept, she hurried downstairs, to be caught up in a bout of sickness so compelling that it stopped her in the hall, her face pale and damp with perspiration, as she fought down the horrible sensation.

  The kitchen door opened just as she was overwhelmed by a feeling of dizziness, and she was dimly aware of Neil’s arms going round her, his deep voice anxious as he called his mother. Half an hour later Heather was ensconced in a comfortable chair sipping weak tea, and eating the biscuit her aunt had insisted would make her feel better, Neil hovering anxiously at her side.

  ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me,’ she admitted to her aunt. ‘I haven’t felt well for days.’ She saw the look mother and son exchanged and felt herself tense. It was almost as though an unspoken message passed between them.

  ‘Neil, go and fill my cup up for me, will you?’ his mother asked calmly. When he had gone she turned to Heather and said softly, ‘Oh, Heather, my dear, for a very intelligent girl I’m beginning to think you’re behaving rather like an ostrich. I suspect you’re pregnant,’ she said calmly. ‘Could that be true?’

  Pregnant! Heather reeled. But of course! Of course she was. She counted back slowly, wondering how on earth she could have been so blind, so stupid. She had been so caught up in what she felt about Race that she had never even contemplated anything like this. Presumably, thinking her experienced, he had looked to her to take whatever precautions she deemed necessary. Race’s child! A queer little thrill of pleasure darted through her.

  ‘I think it might be,’ she told her aunt shakily, suddenly giving way to tears and burying her head in her hands. ‘Oh, Aunt Lydia, I never thought….’

  ‘One seldom does,’ her aunt agreed dryly. ‘I’m not going to ask you what you’re going to do. Think carefully about it, Heather. I know I’m from a different generation and you must, of course, do what you think fit, but, except in exceptional cases, my feeling is that life is a precious and very rare gift. You’re not a schoolgirl, or even a foolish teenager, and if you should decide that you can’t cope with the responsibility
of a child, then you know that your uncle and I will do all that we can to help you. If, on the other hand you decide to keep the baby… well, you can still be sure of our love and support. I take it there’s no chance of a marriage….’

  ‘No, not the slightest,’ Heather assured her bleakly. ‘I won’t even tell him about the baby. It… it wouldn’t be fair. It wasn’t what he intended, and the fault,’ she grimaced, ‘is all mine.’

  Unacknowledged but there between them was the hesitant admission that she would let her pregnancy take its course, and as the day wore on and she had more time to think about and come to terms with it, Heather’s resolve strengthened. She might have an abortion, but did she have the strength of mind to cope with the guilt she would suffer afterwards? There was no easy answer, either way there would be pain, but at least there would also be pleasure in bearing Race’s child. Did she have the right to bring it into the world, though, without the care and love of its father? Thousands of other girls coped in similar circumstances, somehow she would find the strength to do the same. She had money, the support of her family.

  The subject wasn’t mentioned again. Heather paid a discreet visit to Dr Barnes’ surgery, and waited nervously for the results of her tests, surprised to discover how pleased she was to discover they were positive and that she was carrying Race’s child. A warm smile curved her mouth as her fingertips touched lightly against her still flat stomach. Race’s child, some small part of him which would always be hers.

  Her uncle was now up and about although still off work, and Heather decided that she would tell her family her decision over dinner.

  She waited until her aunt had poured the coffee, and then told them simply and calmly.

  ‘I’m very glad, dear,’ her aunt responded kissing her cheek. ‘I’m not going to deny that I wish it hadn’t happened—not for our sake, but for yours, but knowing you as I do, I don’t think you could have coped mentally with the emotional aspects of an abortion.’