Illusions of Happiness (21 page)

More and more Madeleine felt obliged to be with him, and James, less able to go regularly to his place of business, felt obliged to leave the running of it in the hands of his partner, George Foster. He hardly ever left the house these days, and his expressions of gratitude were no help to Madeleine, leaving her feeling guilty on the rare occasions she managed to steal away to see Anthony.

‘We really can’t go on like this,’ Anthony said as she began to dress herself ready to go back to James. The shock of his words pierced her heart as if he had struck into it with a knife.

‘Are you tired of me?’ she exclaimed then broke down as a sudden flood of tears overwhelmed her already miserable being; stood before him still half dressed, head bent, trembling hands covering her face.

Anthony, still naked, was beside her instantly, enfolding her in his arms. ‘Good God, Maddie! Of course not, my darling! I didn’t mean it to sound that way.’

‘It was the way . . . the way you said it,’ she sobbed into his bare chest. ‘It sounded so . . . matter of fact.’

‘I didn’t mean it to sound that way. I was only thinking of you, my darling, being torn in two.’

‘Then what do we do?’ she asked, gulping, just managing to control her sobs.

‘Bury this feeling of guilt, sweetheart, and start to come here again on our old regular basis. I can’t bear not seeing you. I long for those afternoons we spent together. Now it’s just as and when you can tear yourself away from him. I even feel jealous thinking of you there and me here. Sometimes I even catch myself wishing he would die and we could be together, always.’

The last was said in a whisper, almost inaudible, but so passionate that Madeleine felt her heart go cold. She reached up and held his face between her two hands.

‘You mustn’t say such things, Tony!’ she burst out. ‘I love you with all my heart. I sometimes feel the same – us . . . unable to be together all the time? I want to be with you, always, but we mustn’t ever think such wicked things as that . . .’

She heard her voice trail off, knowing he was aware of her identical feelings, but she was too worn down to try convincing him otherwise, loathing herself for such wicked thoughts – thoughts she couldn’t help having.

Seconds later her mind had shut down on this confusion of thoughts as his lips closed over hers with a fierce need, the two of them sinking back on to the already crumpled bedclothes.

Whether James could read her mind or merely harboured a premonition of his demise, he said to her one day, quite out of the blue, ‘I feel I am being such a burden to you, my dear.’

They were sitting in the lounge where he’d insisted on being despite yet another attack of bronchitis, Madeleine holding his hand as she often did these days.

‘You’re not a burden, James, not at all,’ she said, her tone sharp with guilt, but his fingers tightened feebly about hers.

‘I fear I am,’ he said. ‘I’m so grateful to have you by my side. Had I not met you . . .’ He broke off to another bout of coughing, his chest sounding tight and painful. It was late April and yet still he suffered. There seemed no end to it.

Waving away the nurse sitting nearby as she jumped up to help, he went on, ‘I don’t know how long this blasted condition will last before it sees me off, but in case it does—’

‘James, don’t say things like that!’ Madeleine burst out, but he let go of her hand and held up his own to still her protest.

‘In case it does,’ he continued. ‘I need to do something for you . . . Something you’ve wanted for a long time. Just lately I’ve been giving more thought to it. Of course, if anything happens to me you will be left safe and comfortably off, but I need to know that you will not be left on your own.’

‘Please,’ she began in alarm, now certain that he knew about her and Anthony, but again he held up his hand to quell her outburst.

‘I’ve decided,’ he went on, interrupted by yet another heavy bout of coughing and then recovering, while she sat tense with dread of what he knew. ‘I have decided, my dear, to engage a reputable enquiry agency—’

‘James!’ she could only gasp defensively, but again he cut her short.

‘My way of expressing my gratitude for all you have done for me,’ he continued, misinterpreting her outburst. ‘I have held off for so long but it now seems time I made an effort to grant you your wish.’

He stopped to regain his laboured breath, a sound that would usually have pierced right through her, though not this time as she sat tense with self-recrimination, wondering how long he had known.

‘I can’t say they will be successful,’ he finally continued, slowly now. ‘All I can say is that we can but try, my dear.’ Was he talking about her and Anthony?

‘I don’t understand, James,’ she said.

His hold on her hand again tightened a little. ‘I’ve decided to try and trace your daughter for you, my dear. The firm I have in mind has a fine reputation of being very successful tracing missing persons. And if they do prove successful, and I pray for your sake that they are, I will rest content knowing you’ll not be left entirely alone when I’m no longer here.’

There flooded over her an intense sense of relief together with another of overwhelming joy. Quite overcome by the gratitude he was trying to show, all she could do was half collapse in his arms, weeping stupidly.

‘I’ve done nothing to deserve this,’ she whispered almost incoherently as she wept.

‘But you have,’ he said quietly, patting her shoulder. ‘You have filled an elderly man’s lonely life, and this is the only way that I can thank you.’

Recovering enough to sit up, Madeleine made no reply, her earlier joy melting away to be replaced by her own weight of guilt and the deceit that she and Anthony had practised so cruelly and for so long.

She realized that he was still speaking, so quietly that it seemed to be from a great distance. ‘But for you,’ he was saying, ‘I might well be sitting here, alone, dwelling on a beloved wife taken from me, wanting only for my illness to take me so I could be joined with her again. But you changed all that and I need to see you happy and not left on your own when my time comes. Helping you find your daughter is the only way I can thank you.’

Madeleine made no reply as his voice died away, but her sense of guilt continued to mount. If only he knew how she really felt about their marriage. She hadn’t really wanted him to die; had only wanted a solution to present itself so that she and Anthony could be together without causing him hurt. But that had been impossible, trapped in a marriage to a decent man she liked but couldn’t love.

And now he was prepared to do this thing for her, this one thing she wanted above all else, other than to be with Anthony always; she felt weak with guilt and gratitude in equal measures.

‘You mustn’t think so highly of me,’ she said in a small voice.

But he had already closed his eyes like a weary soul looking for the chance to drift away from the heavy weight of living.

She’d not told Anthony what his uncle had offered to do. Somehow she felt, maybe foolishly, that it might affect what the two of them had together. Once, when she’d mentioned there being a baby somewhere, he had gone silent. She learned then that it was better not to mention it ever, lest it caused a rift in their relationship. Bad enough that James’s illness during the winter kept them apart more often than they’d have wanted, Anthony terrifying her on one occasion by saying, maybe without thinking, that if James’s ill health continued indefinitely, he couldn’t see what future there was for them.

She had burst into tears that had deteriorated into sobs, crying that she wouldn’t want to live if he left her. He’d immediately cuddled her to him, saying he hadn’t meant it, apologizing too for his lack of feeling towards his uncle. But she knew how he felt deep down inside for she felt the same.

‘We can’t let it come between us,’ she cried, sobbing against his shoulder. ‘I want to be with you but I can’t just walk away from him when he’s so ill.’

She would never do that she told herself, yet when James had gone down with pneumonia, a tiny insidious voice inside her head had posed the same question over and over: what if pneumonia eventually took him, and the answer: she would be free to spend the rest of her life with Anthony.

Hating herself, she had consequently felt such a gush of relief to see him recover, sparing her the anguish of believing that those terrible thoughts in her head might have contributed to his demise. But now came a sense of impatience at the length of time his recovery was taking; disrupting her life almost as much as it had that winter, causing her plans for her Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve parties – said to be
the
ones to be seen at in London – to be cancelled. He’d needed peace and quiet and although recovering to some extent by then, her heart would not have been in it; he needed her and she wanted only to be with Anthony.

So she had seen 1922 in quietly, her days taken up helping to nurse him, seeing the year ahead as the same old water flowing under the same old bridge – a repeat of last year. Now suddenly it had all changed.

The coming of spring had helped aid his recovery to some extent apart from the bouts of bronchitis, his health still threatening to deteriorate. But the coming of warmer weather was helping to some extent, and true to his word, he had promised to have a firm of investigators try to trace her baby.

‘It might take some time,’ he’d said, ‘maybe months, even years. She will already be seven or eight now – no longer a baby. Do you still want me to carry on with it, my dear?’

Yes, she did. But what worried her was that Anthony would look on the child as a disruption to their relationship, a fear that grew in strength as the months passed. She’d even begun to question what she really wanted, her baby returned to her or her relationship with Anthony to continue. Somehow it seemed that she couldn’t have the two. Yet she longed to hold her baby – it was always a baby she saw despite James’s words, recalling still that warm soft skin against her face, hearing that one tiny whimper before it was snatched out of her arms by an alarmed nurse.

Maybe if she explained, Anthony would understand how she felt, yet whenever she lay in his arms, happy and fulfilled after having made such glorious and prolonged love, courage always failed her.

It was taking so long. October, and still no trace. Then in November came a letter saying the agent had finally located her. ‘Living in Derbyshire,’ James said after first reading the letter to himself. ‘Jones, the name of those who adopted her named her Caroline but call her Carrie by all account.’

Like a dog
, came the thought, tearing at her.
Treated like a dog?
‘Here, Carrie!’ Yes, like a dog.

‘What does the agent say about her?’ she cried, overwhelmed by a fierce onslaught of excitement coupled with an instant need to protect. ‘Does she seem well? Is she being well treated?’

The old fear of her having been brought up forced to do harsh manual work, maybe living in squalor, uncared for, maybe even having to endure ill treatment, such thoughts had always torn at her.

‘Exceedingly well by all account,’ James told her. ‘Those who adopted her are reasonably well off and already have her name down for a reputable girls’ public school when she is old enough. The report says she appears to have everything she could wish for and is apparently well loved and is, so we are told, a normal, happy, contended child.’

It was no consolation. In truth, although she would not admit it even to herself, it would have helped her case in getting her back had she been in need of love and attention. Not that she’d have intentionally wished that on her baby.

‘There is, however, a snag, my dear.’ James went on, his eyes on the agent’s report. ‘The adoptive parents are reluctant to have you see her or she to see you. They also fear that you might have a claim on her as the rightful mother, having not given her up willingly, she being taken from you against your will.’

Of course they’d be reluctant, was Madeleine’s first thought, her mind going instantly to some ulterior motive the agent might have missed, though she couldn’t imagine what, other than love for their adopted child.

‘So I cannot see what else you can do,’ James was saying, ‘except to content yourself that she is well loved and happy. If you love her, my dear, don’t take that away from her. It would be so cruel, torn from the only people she has ever known and loved, to be forced to live with strangers. I don’t think you could bring yourself to do that to her, my dear.’

Was he trying to be just, or saying this so that he could wash his hands of the whole business?
You’ve done your duty and now you can rest, relieved you won’t be saddled with a small child in your life. She’s nothing to you. But what about me, my feelings, my love, my need of her, my desperate need of her?
These thoughts screamed in her head.

‘No!’ she burst out. ‘How do you know if that’s the truth? They could have bribed these enquiry people of yours to say good things about her.’

James was frowning, finding his urgent and dedicated search for the sake of the woman he had married and felt indebted to, being questioned.

‘They are a reputable firm.’ His voice was sharp. ‘As a businessman I made certain they were. Why would you think I wouldn’t?’

Because at your age you don’t want her under your feet
,
that’s why.
But she said nothing. But tears had begun to slip down her cheeks, tears she felt she had not the strength even to lift her hand to wipe away.

‘If you are absolutely set on this, my dear,’ he went on in a smoother tone, seeing her grief, ‘I could offer these people, say two thousand pounds to let you see her, and, let’s say twice that if they forgo their right to her. If they refuse, however, there is little we can do except resort to a probably lengthy legal battle, which could take years.’

Madeleine found her voice. ‘How could they refuse such a sum?’ With two thousand pounds, one could buy several decent sized houses. She tried not to acknowledge that James was being almost overgenerous for her sake.

‘It was merely a suggestion,’ he was saying. ‘They are pretty well off, apparently, and totally unable to have children of their own, so why would they relinquish her now, for any amount of money – a child they love dearly? They have, however, made one gesture. That is, in the guise of, say, a distant friend, they agree to let you see her but not to talk to her.’