Someone Special (4 page)

Hester glanced down at the child in her arms; baby Helen was sucking very slowly now, her eyelids drooping.
Hester, warm in her dry clothes, close to the range, found her own eyelids drooping, too. It wouldn’t matter if she just had forty winks, provided …

The pair were sleeping soundly when the back door opened. The noise of it, for it grated against the quarry tiles and creaked protestingly, would have woken the dead. Mother and child woke simultaneously, the child to murmur a protest, the mother to cover her bare breasts.

Matthew, who had been enjoying the sight of his wife’s newly developed body, felt like one of the dirty old men who hang around bathing beaches trying to catch a glimpse of girls changing their clothing. He looked away, his face growing hot, and stepped forward softly on stockinged feet, having shed his rubber boots outside the back door.

‘It’s only me, Hester. Don’t stop, if she’s still ’ungry.’

Hester tugged the child free of her nipple and clasped her to her breast. Matthew could see that she was using Helen as a shield. She turned a pink, guilty face towards her husband.

‘Oh, Matthew, I’m so sorry, I must have fallen asleep … just let me put Helen down and I’ll get you some dinner, only it’ll have to be bread and cheese … oh, there isn’t any bread, is there? Well, there’s some cold pie …’

He crossed the room in a couple of strides and took the baby from her, then he turned away from her, looking down into the small face, the eyes already half-closed, the mouth working only reminiscently, as though tasting again the pleasures of her recent meal. He did not look around, knowing that she was hastily buttoning up, embarrassed by the thought of his seeing her big, swollen breasts. He wanted to turn and take her in his arms, to caress her, to tell her how beautiful were the breasts which she strove to hide, but he knew that would be fatal. She was shy as a
wren and sometimes looked at him as a wren would look at a cat, her round amber eyes full of fear and confusion. So he would go gently, win her confidence. She was such a child, with no more knowledge of men and women than the wren he had called her. But time would mend her fear, she would trust him, given time.

‘I’ll put her down for you. You make us a cuppa. Cold pie’s jest fine, if that’s all we’ve got handy. A man with a child expects up’eaval, so don’t go blamin’ yourself.’

She sighed tremulously and he heard the rocking chair creak as she stood up, then a pair of thin little arms wrapped themselves round his shoulders and she stood on tiptoe to kiss the back of his neck, a featherlight touch.

‘Matthew, I don’t deserve you, you’re the kindest man in the world and I’m probably the worst wife. But I do try … lie her on her back, won’t you? I’m afraid she’ll suffocate if she’s on her front.’

For a moment he stood very still, more affected by the spontaneous caress than she could ever know. If only she knew how I feel, he thought, if only I could tell her … if only she could love me back! But she will; the old man says love comes late to many a marriage, she’ll love me one day and not spend all her time being grateful because I’m kind…. Kind! When I want her so badly to feel as I do when our bodies join in love. She’s so sweet, so young, so rare. I’d give my eyes to please her. But it’ll come, it’ll come. I must be patient, and I’ve always been a patient man.

Aloud he said, ‘I’ll put her on her back. Blessed lamb, she’s all but asleep already. Is that kettle boilin’? A nice, hot cuppa would go down a fair treat.’

It was a very smart nursing home, right in the centre of the city of Norwich. Constance Radwell lay in her private room which overlooked the bustle of Thorpe Road and
the railway station just across the way, and received the homage of friends and relatives, the ministrations of the nurses, and the attentions of the handsome obstetrician who had delivered her daughter ten days ago. She had been allowed up the previous day, to walk as far as the bathroom – and hadn’t the bath been a treat, after sponge-downs for so long? They’d taken her to the nursery too, where she had seen baby Anna in her beautiful, hygienic pink cot; before that the baby had been brought to her at regular intervals for feeding, though the nursing staff had advised her to wean the child on to a bottle as soon as she could.

‘Better for your figure, Mrs Radwell,’ the senior staff nurse assured her. ‘It gives you more freedom, too. You’re having a live-in nanny, of course?’

Constance said wearily that they had engaged a very experienced woman and the senior staff nurse nodded.

‘Best to leave the early training to an expert,’ she said. ‘Well, Mrs Radwell, you’ve made an excellent recovery. You’ll probably be able to go home in a week or so.’

It was an expensive nursing home and they took very good care of their patients. The food was equalled only by first-class hotels, and the staff waited on one hand and foot, but Constance couldn’t wait to get away from it, to go home. Not that it was the sort of thing you admitted – the nurses would think she was insane or sex-mad or something if she said she was missing her husband, and even though she and JJ had only been married a year she knew it was not the sort of thing you told JJ either, not unless you wanted trouble.

She adored him! That was her Achilles heel, the dark secret which she had managed to hide from him during their courtship, engagement and early married life. Because JJ was used to women adoring him and would never have proposed marriage had he realised that she
was like all the others. He could have had his pick of women, that was understood. Blondes, brunettes, redheads, all swooned at a glance from him. So tall, so dark, so sultry, so incredibly handsome. Constance thought he had finally proposed to her because she had held aloof, but his mother had not agreed.

‘He won’t get control of his money until he marries or is forty years old, which his grandfather thought a responsible age,’ she had explained, her small, bright eyes fixed on Constance’s face as though hoping for tears, protests, perhaps even a threat to break off the engagement. ‘I’m not saying he doesn’t want to marry you, Connie, I’m sure he does, but I do think you should be told about the inheritance.’

‘I did know, actually,’ Constance lied, sounding fashionably bored. ‘He’ll have Goldenstone, too, won’t he?’

Goldenstone was the old house out in the country, surrounded by trees and with a small round lake on which swans sailed serenely, paddling to and fro among the ducks and the leaves which fell on its mirror surface. Constance had seen Goldenstone for the first time the previous autumn and could not forget the white of the swans, the blue of the water, the gold of the floating chestnut leaves.

‘Upon his marriage, yes,’ Mrs Radwell confirmed. The hopeful look had disappeared, to be replaced by a sort of calculation. ‘You liked Goldenstone, I understand? James John said you did.’

‘He was right,’ Constance had said, coolly, unemotionally. ‘So perhaps I’m marrying JJ to get my hands on Goldenstone, just as you seem to think he may be marrying me to get his hands on his money.’

And mine
. The words, unsaid, floated in the air between them, for Constance, an only child, would inherit a great deal of money one day.

Mrs Radwell made a vague sound which might have
been agreement or protest. ‘Darling Connie, how you tease! So when’s the wedding to be?’

Constance had smiled. They were sitting in the pretty drawing-room of Mrs Radwell’s town house on Chapel Field, which overlooked the gardens. These were in their early spring finery, with snowdrops and crocuses massed beneath the trees and the first of the daffodil spears showing in the damp winter grass.

‘JJ says soon,’ she drawled. ‘A month? Perhaps two? I rather fancy April, myself; such a pretty month.’

‘Very wise.’ Mrs Radwell picked up her teacup and poured a second cup of tea. ‘It wouldn’t do to wait, would it? I would never call James John fickle, it’s the last thing I’d call him, but he does have so many girlies hanging on his every word … yes, April would be a nice month for a wedding.’

Mrs Radwell senior, wrong in so many things, had been right about April 1925. It was a glorious month for a wedding and they had a perfect day, all gentle sunshine and warm breezes. They honeymooned in the south of France, in a borrowed villa with a staff of three, so Constance didn’t have to raise a finger, and a private beach where she and JJ swam naked and made love on the sand – or rather on a blanket on the sand, since JJ, who knew about these things, said that sand under the foreskin was something he preferred not to contemplate, let alone experience.

It was perfection. There were tall pine trees, masses of purple bouganvillea, and a stunning scarlet sports car in which JJ drove her along the coast to the casino to eat roast chicken and strawberries and drink champagne and gamble a little, but not too much, before driving home in the starlight. There was sunshine by day and starshine by night, balmy breezes and gentle music; looking back, Constance realised that first love and the sheer romance of being with JJ had coloured every moment.

He could have married anyone but he chose me, Constance thought on and off, all through the first glorious fortnight. She looked at herself in the mirrored walls of the bathroom and saw half-a-dozen pretty little Constances, all with fashionably bobbed silver-blonde hair, long, golden-brown legs and small, pink-tipped breasts, and she knew JJ had made a good choice. She loved it when he came to her in here, caressing down her back, titillating, teasing her into an ecstasy of wanting him, and watching her all the time in the mirrors. She thought him the perfect lover, having no comparison, and pitied girls who were married to other, ordinary men.

Then the second fortnight came, just as hot, just as sunny, just as pine-scented and beautiful. But during the second fortnight the serpent entered Eden: a serpent with long red hair, a husky voice, and a very unfashionable figure, all curves, Constance thought scornfully. She, with her small breasts and slender hips, could wear the modern fashions – short skirts, dropped waists, fringes and beads – and look just right. In her sports slacks and shirt she looked like an adorable boy – JJ remarked on it whilst clutching the one part of her where such a resemblance was most lacking.

Yet he liked the redheaded Cynthia. Some sixth sense told Constance that JJ liked the other woman even before she had proof. Another sixth sense, the one which had helped her to get JJ to propose, told her to pretend like fun that she didn’t know, that it wasn’t happening. Because how could it be? They were on their honeymoon, JJ couldn’t keep his hands off her, and Cynthia was with a man called Malcolm Short, a large, coarse character who wore a gold necklace under his shirt and gold bracelets on each wrist. He smoked a big cigar and wore the loudest suits ever to appear on the Riviera; even his swimsuit was loud, striped in navy and puce. So was
it possible that in this case, at least, her sixth sense was wrong?

It was during the second fortnight that a crowd of people they knew went out to dinner together, to the casino, and afterwards the men went to the tables and the women clustered in groups on the terrace, drinking and talking. Constance was with Betty, who came from Hampshire, and a French girl, Lise. The other two were brunettes and Constance was congratulating herself on finding two friends she genuinely liked who could not possibly compete in the ‘who’s the blondest?’ contest she always held in her head when she met another fair girl, when she happened to notice that Cynthia, who had been talking to Rosie and Maud only seconds earlier, had disappeared.

‘Where’s Cynthia?’

She hadn’t asked the question, that was Betty’s chirruping little voice.

‘Gone back to the tables,’ someone said. ‘She’s a real gambler, not like the fellows. They play at it; with Cynthia, it’s for real.’

‘Is that how she got Malcolm?’ someone else asked. ‘What a prize!’

‘He’s filthy rich,’ Rosie volunteered when the burst of laughter had died down. ‘Owns half of Birmingham.’

‘So?’

That was Constance’s one contribution: ‘So?’ Little enough, but perhaps it spoke volumes. At any rate, Rosie shot her a quick, rather apprehensive glance.

‘Cynthia doesn’t have a bean, old dear,’ she explained. ‘She needs someone who’ll let her gamble with his money. Malcolm’s ideal; she won’t want anything else from him and all he gets from her is the status of having a beautiful woman in tow.’

‘Is she beautiful, though?’ someone asked cattily. ‘She’s certainly got heaps of sex appeal, and the most enormous breasts, but as for beauty …’

‘She has a certain appeal,’ another girl drawled. ‘Ah, there’s a waiter; anyone want another little drinkie?’

The waiter came on to the terrace and the girls crowded round him and his tray. Someone began to dispense champagne cocktails and Constance turned and left the terrace, sliding unobtrusively back into the building, though she had no idea what she intended to do. She thought about going over to the tables, checking the whereabouts of JJ … she would not lower herself to checking on Cynthia … and suggesting that they go home, have an early night. After all, they were on their honeymoon.

She went into the casino. JJ wasn’t at any of the tables, but perhaps he’d gone outside for a smoke. Smoking was not encouraged around the tables. She already knew he was not on the terrace.

She finally ran him to earth on the beach. It was quite a small beach. Despite the darkness she could see him easily enough, his active bare buttocks gleaming in the moonlight. He was naked, but he wasn’t lying on the sand, risking his foreskin. He was lying on Cynthia.

Constance went back to the casino and was sick in the primrose-coloured handbasin in the ladies’ toilet. Then, with shaking hands and a dreadful pallor, she went back to the gaming tables and bought some chips. She slung them down on number fifteen and won. When JJ finally showed up, she was brisk, pink, laughing, with half-a-dozen men trying to drink champagne from her slipper and with notes bulging out of her little evening bag.

She never told him what she had seen on the beach, by the light of that large golden Riviera moon, but it taught her a dreadful lesson. Never trust a man and never let him know it. If there had been the sort of scene she yearnd to make she would have made him look a fool and probably lost him. But because he thought her ignorant of his
affaire
he took her to bed and made love to her – how
could
he, she mourned, letting him, murmuring that
she was tired, he mustn’t mind – and then he rolled over and slept deeply, his dark hair rumpled, his mouth slack in repose, with a cruelty she had never noticed before in the line of his lips.