Authors: Susan Howatch
The Dark Shore (7 page)
4
It was eleven o’clock when Justin arrived back at Consett Mews. His grandmother, who was writing letters in the drawing room, looked up, startled by his abrupt entrance.
“Justin—” He saw her expression change almost imperceptibly as she saw his face. “Darling, what’s happened? What did he say? Did he—” He stood still, looking at her. She stopped.
“What happened,” he said, “to the letters my father sent me from Canada ten years ago?”
He saw her blush, an ugly red stain beneath the careful make-up, and in a sudden sickening moment he thought, Its true. He did write. She lied to me all the time.
“Letters?” she said. “From Canada?”
“He wrote me six letters. And sent a birthday present.”
“Is that what he said?” But it was only a halfhearted attempt at defense. She took a step towards him, making an impulsive gesture with her hands. “I only did it for your own good, darling. I thought it would only upset you to read letters from him when he had left you behind and gone to Canada without you.”
“Did you read the letters?”
“No,” she said at once. “No, I—”
“You let six letters come to me from my father and you destroyed them to make me think he had forgotten me entirely?”
“Justin, no, Justin, you don’t understand—”
“You never had any letters from him so you didn’t want me to have letters from him either!”
“No,” she said, “no, it wasn’t like that—”
“You lied and deceived and cheated me year after year, day after day—”
“It was for your own good, Justin, your own good
...”
She sat down again as if he had exhausted all her strength, and suddenly she was old to him, a woman with a lined, tear-stained face and bent shoulders and trembling hands. “Your father cares nothing for anyone except himself,” he heard her whisper at last. “He takes people and uses them for his own ends, so that although you care for him your love is wasted because he never cares for you. I’ve been useful to him at various times, providing
him with a home when he was young, looking after you when he was older—but he’s never cared. You’ll be useful to him now to help him with his business in Canada. Oh, don’t think I can’t guess why he wanted to see you! But he’ll never care for you yourself, only for your usefulness to him—”
“You’re wrong,” said Justin. “He does care. You don’t understand.”
“Understand! I understand all too well!”
“I don’t believe you understood him any better than you understood me.”
“Justin—”
“I’m going to Canada with him.”
There was a moment of utter silence.
“You can’t,” she said at last. “Please, Justin. Be sensible. You’re talking of altering your whole career, damaging all your prospects in London, just because of a ten-minute meeting this morning with a man you hardly know. Please, please be sensible and don’t talk like this.”
“I’ve made up my mind.”
Camilla looked at him, the years blurring before her eyes, and suddenly the boy before her was Jon saying in that same level, obstinate voice which she had come to dread so much: “I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to marry her.”
“You’re a fool, Justin,” she said, her voice suddenly harsh and clear. “You’ve no idea what you’re doing. You know nothing about your father at all.”
He turned aside and moved towards the door. “I’m not listening to this.”
“Of course,” said Camilla, “You’re too young to remember what happened at Clougy.”
“Shut up!” he shouted, whirling to face her. “Shut up, shut up!”
“I wasn’t there, but I can guess what happened. He drove your mother to death, you do realize that, don’t you? The jury said the death was accidental, but I always knew it was suicide. The marriage was finished, and once that was gone there was nothing else left for her. Of course anyone could have foreseen the marriage wouldn’t last! Her attraction for him was entirely sexual and after several years of marriage it was only natural that he should become bored with her. It was the same old story—she cared for him, but basically he never cared for her, only for the pleasure she could give him in bed. And once the pleasure had been replaced by boredom she meant nothing to him at all. So he started to look round for some other woman. It had to be some woman who was quite different, preferably someone rather aloof and unobtainable, because that made the task of conquest so much more interesting and exciting. And during the weekend that your mother died, just such a woman happened to be staying at Clougy. Of course you never knew that he and Marijohn—”
Justin's hands were over his ears, shutting her voice from his mind as he stumbled into the hall and banged the door shut behind him. Then, after running up the stairs two at a time, he reached his room, found a suitcase and started to pack his belongings.
5
It was noon. On the sixth floor of the Mayfair Hotel, Jon was sitting in his room working out an advertisement for the personal column of the
Times
and wondering whether there would be any point in trying to see Michael Rivers again. Before him on the table lay his penciled note of Eve’s telephone number, and as he worried over the problem he picked up the slip of paper idly and bent it between his fingers. He would have to get in touch with the woman to get to the bottom of this business of the anonymous phone call, but if only he could find Marijohn first it would be easier to know which line to adopt
...
He was just tossing the scrap of paper aside and concentrating on his message for the
Times
when the phone rang.
He picked up the receiver. “Yes?”
“There’s a lady here to see you, Mr. Towers.”
“Does she give her name?”
“No, sir.”
It would be Eve ready to lay her cards on the table. “All right, I’ll come down.”
He replaced the receiver, checked the money in his wallet and went out. Canned music was still playing in the lift. On the ground floor he walked out into the lobby and crossed over to the leather chairs of the open lounge below the reception desk.
His mind saw her the instant before his eyes did. He had a moment of searing relief mingled with a burst of blazing joy, and then he was moving forward again towards her and Marijohn was smiling into his eyes.
PART II
One
1
Sarah spent the journey across the Atlantic alternating between a volume of John Clare’s poetry and the latest mystery by a well-known crime writer. Occasionally it occurred to her that she hadn’t understood a word she was reading and that it would be much more sensible to put both books away, but still she kept them on her lap and watched the written page from time to time. And then at last, the lights of London lay beneath the plane, stretching as far as the eye could see, and she felt the old familiar feeling of nervousness tighten beneath her heart as she thought of Jon.
She loved Jon and knew perfectly well that she wanted to marry him, but he remained an enigma to her at times and it was this strange unknown quality which made her nervous. She called it the Distant Mood. She could understand Jon when he was gay, excited, nervous, musical, sad, disappointed or merely obstinate, but Jon in the Distant Mood was something which frightened her because she knew neither the cause of the mood nor the correct response to it. Her nervousness usually reduced her to silence, and her silence led to a sense of failure, hard to explain. Perhaps, she had thought, it would be different in England; he would be far from the worries and troubles of his work, and perhaps when he was in an easier, less complex frame of mind she would be able to say to him:
“
Jon, why is it that sometimes you’re so far away that I don’t know how to reach out to communicate with you? Why is it that sometimes you’re so abrupt I feel I mustn’t talk for fear of making you lose your temper and quarrel? Is the fault mine? Is it that I don’t understand something in you or that I do something to displease you? If it’s my fault, tell me what I’m doing wrong so that I can put it right, because I can’t bear it when you’re so far away and remote and indifferent to the world.”
He had been in the Distant Mood when she had telephoned him in London two nights ago. She had recognized it at once, and although she had done her best to sound gay and cheerful, she had cried when she had replaced the receiver. That had led to the inevitable scene with her parents.
“Sarah dear, if there’s any doubt in your mind, don’t
...
”
“Far better to be sorry now than be sorry after you’re married.”
“I mean, darling, I know you’re very lucky to be marrying Jon. In many ways you
r
father and I both like him very much, but all the same, he’s many years older than you and of course, it
is
difficult when you marry out of your generation
...
”
And Sarah had very stupidly lost her temper in the face of these platitudes and had locked herself in her room to face a sleepless night on her own.
The next day had been spent in packing and preparing for the journey to London on the following day. He would phone that night, she had thought. He would be certain to phone that night, and when he talked he would sound quite different and everything would be all right again.
But the phone call never came.
Her mother had decided Sarah’s distress was due to pre-marital nerves and had talked embarrassingly for five whole minutes littered with awkward pauses on the intimate side of marriage. In the end, Sarah had gone out to the nearest cinema to escape and had seen an incredibly bad epic film on a wide screen which had given her a headache. It had been almost a relief to board the plane for London the following day and take a definite course of action at last after so much restless waiting and anxiety.
The plane drifted lower and lower over the mass of lights until Sarah could see the landing lights of the runway rising from the ground to meet them, and then there were the soft thumps of landing and the long cruise to a halt on English soil. Outside the plane, the air was damp and cool. The trek through customs came next, her nerves tightening steadily as the minutes passed, until at last she was moving into the great central lobby and straining her eyes for a glimpse of Jon.
Something had gone wrong. He wasn’t there. He was going to break off the engagement. He had had an accident, was injured, dying, dead
...
“God Almighty,” said Jon’s voice just behind her. “I thought you were a white sheet at first! Who’s been frightening the life out of you?”
The relief was a great cascading warmth making her limbs relax and the tears spring to her eyes.
“Oh Jon, Jon.”
There was no Distant Mood this time. He was smiling, his eyes brilliantly alive, his arms very strong, and when he kissed her it seemed ridiculous that she should ever have had any worries at all.
“You look,” he said, “quite frighteningly sophisticated. What’s all this green eye-shadow and mud on your eyelashes?”
“Oh Jon, I spent hours—” She laughed suddenly in a surge of happiness and he laughed too, kissing her again and then sliding his arm round her waist.
“Am I covered in Canada’s most soign
é
e lipstick?”
He was. She produced a handkerchief and carefully wiped it off. “Right,” he said briskly, when she had finished. “Let’s go. There’s dinner waiting for us at the Hilton and end
l
ess things to be discussed before I take you to your Aunt Mildred’s, so we’ve no time to waste
...
Is this all your luggage or has Cleopatra got another gold barge full of suitcases sailing up the customs’ conveyor belt?”
There was a taxi waiting and then came the journey into the heart of London, through the Middlesex suburbs to Kensington, Knightsbridge and the Park. The warmth of London hummed around them, the roar of engines revved in their ears, and Sarah, her hand clasped tightly in Jon’s, thought how exciting it was to come home at last to her favorite city and to travel through the brightly-lit streets to the resplendent glamour of a lush, expensive world.
“How’s Cleopatra feeling now?”
“Thinking how much nicer than Mark Antony you are and how much better than Alexandria London is.”
He laughed. She was happy. When they reached the Hilton she had a moment’s thrill as she crossed the threshold into the luxury which was still new to her, and then they were in the diningroom and she was trying hard to pretend she was quite accustomed to dining in the world’s most famous restaurants.
Jon ordered the meal, chose the wines and tossed both menu and wine-list on one side.
“Sarah, there are a lot of things I have to discuss with you.”
Of course, she thought. The wedding and honeymoon. Exciting, breathtaking plans.
“First of all, I want to apologize for not phoning you last night. I became very involved with my family and there were various difficulties. I hope you’ll forgive me and understand.”
She smiled thankfully, eager to forgive. “Of course, Johnny. I thought something like that must have happened.”
“Secondly I have to apologize for my manner on the phone the other night. I’m afraid I must have sounded very odd indeed but again I was heavily involved with other things and I wasn’t expecting you to call. I hope you didn’t think I wasn’t pleased that you were going to come over to England earlier than expected. It was a wonderful surprise.”
