The Healing Stream (28 page)

As they glared at each other, she holding a pile of underpants and he a small box of studs and cufflinks, all those memories crowded back. So often she tried to push them out of her mind but now she welcomed them – they added to her armoury.

‘If you’re going to be away a long time perhaps you’ll realize how stupid you’ve been in refusing to have a phone in the house. I suppose, as long as you’re comfortable, you won’t care if something goes wrong here – Millie ill, or me breaking my leg. It was damn fool pig-headedness. You always think you know best.’

‘As invariably I do. However, if I’m leaving you alone here, except for the child, you ought to have a telephone. I’ll leave you to arrange it.’ She tried to see his capitulation as a sign that he wanted her to feel safe while she and Millie were alone and with no near neighbours. She tried but she didn’t succeed. There was no caring warmth in his voice as he added, ‘I’ll write a letter giving the instruction to have it installed; they may not ask for my authority, but if they do you’ll have the letter to give them.’

‘How long? You didn’t answer.’

He put the stud box into the case and came to her side of the bed. ‘I didn’t answer because I don’t know. Tessa, we need time away from each other. That such an important company has bought the rights to make a film about the people of Burghton is something of a blessing, to you as well as to me. You can’t pretend you’ll be heartbroken to see the back of me.’

She felt stunned by what he said. But was she being honest? She forced herself to look at him squarely as she answered. ‘I hadn’t even considered it,’ she said, speaking evenly and showing no emotion, for if she let her feelings show she would be lost. ‘I can’t say you’ve been much company lately. Even Aunt Naomi and Julian have noticed it. I imagined you were hungering for a fling with some of your lady friends who I’m sure are standing by, ready to oblige.’

‘Don’t, Tessa! I hate to hear you talking like that.’

‘The truth is – seeing that we are being so honest – that you aren’t interested in my talking at all. Yesterday I told you that old Señor Cajore is giving up his land over the road from here and I was considering using Gran’s money to buy it. And what advice did you give? Not a word. I might not have spoken while you stood there with an empty, bored look on your face. Well, if you’re interested, which I doubt, I worked it all out in the night and I have enough money and could still afford to hire help.’

‘You don’t have to earn a living, for God’s sake. You’ll never be short of money.’

‘It’s nothing to do with money. You can’t even begin to understand.’ As each one spoke, they slipped further down the slippery slope into the mire from which they couldn’t climb. She had no idea what went on in his mind, but as she faced him with her chin high and a look of defiance on her face, their glory days were forgotten and all she remembered was his obvious avoidance of her – and indeed of everyone – in recent months and the frantic and demanding love-making that held neither tenderness nor eroticism. ‘No, you pay me well for my services just like you’d have to pay any prostitute.’

She felt the sting as he brought his hand across her cheek. Then, before she could get her breath, she was pulled into his arms and crushed against him so that she could hardly breathe.

‘God forgive me. What have I done to you?’ he muttered.

She drew back from him, clenching her teeth together and barely moving her lips in her battle against the tears that were waiting to gush. ‘We’re both to blame. Like you say, we need time away from each other.’ More sure of her voice, she went on, ‘If I’m driving you to Valencia, what time do you need to be there?’

‘I’ve already arranged with Diego Pastor to pick me up. He’s due in less than half an hour. I’ll be too late in London to look in to talk to Hector Milward tonight; I’ll have to see him tomorrow. I’m getting the morning flight to Los Angeles the next day.’

‘I see,’ she answered, her tone polite and unemotional. It was an attitude they both needed. She couldn’t let him go with hate hanging between them. But was this cool detachment any better? ‘Don’t forget your passport.’

‘I have it in my pocket.’

‘You’ll write, won’t you? I shan’t know where you are and I shall want to give you the telephone number when they connect us.’

‘Naturally I’ll tell you where I am and give you the telephone details. If you think of anything you need me for before I fly, I shall be at the publishers’ sometime tomorrow. You’ll find their number on the pad on my desk. Just ask to be put through to Hector Milward.’ Like strangers lost for last-minute words at a railway station, they didn’t quite meet each other’s eyes. ‘I’ve a few loose ends to see to in the study – and I won’t forget that note about the telephone. I’ll see you to say goodbye before I go. I’ll take these two larger cases down if you don’t mind bringing the small one.’

Wordlessly she picked it up and left the room as he held the door open for her, then, taking the two larger cases, he followed her down the stairs.

He’d been gone more than an hour. By now he must be getting near Valencia. Why had she let them part as they had? If only she could live the time again she would sink every ounce of her pride and beg him to – to what? To love her as he had in the beginning? Was it
her
fault he couldn’t find contentment? She’d always tried to understand his need to escape to the city, but since his last trip he had been different. Had he met someone else, someone with a mind like his own, someone cleverer than she was? But no one could love him as she did. Round and round in her mind went all the possibilities for the change in him and his need to get away from her.

Millie didn’t seem to notice any change in her as the nightly bath ritual was performed and the story read. Tessa congratulated herself on playing her part well as she kissed the little girl goodnight.

‘Didn’t say goodnight to Daddy,’ Millie announced, as always her voice firm and positive beyond her years. Millie was unlike either of her parents – a clumsy dancer and a straight no-nonsense talker even though she was only three.

‘You haven’t forgotten already? Daddy’s gone away for a little while.’

The child frowned. ‘He was here, I saw him ’safternoon.’

Had he forgotten to say goodbye to her? Surely that showed how far from them his thoughts had gone. The wave of misery that swept over Tessa almost destroyed her determination to act normally.

‘He went quite suddenly. I expect he couldn’t find you,’ she said with a bright smile, ‘but never mind, he’ll soon be home.’

Millie grunted. ‘He didn’t look for me. Me and Maria were making biscuits.’

‘That sounds good. Cuddle down and go to sleep, love.’

Closing the bedroom door behind her, Tessa put an end to the charade. Her footsteps on the marble floor seemed to echo through the emptiness of the house. Going to his study she sat by his desk where he had left the note instructing that the telephone be connected. Even that emphasized the separation that had come between them, a separation far greater than miles.

Uninvited and taking her by surprise she thought of her grandmother. ‘Gran,’ she whispered as at last the tears gushed. ‘What’ll I do, Gran? He’s all there is, everything. He’s fed up with me. Not angry – that wouldn’t be so hopeless – but bored,
bored.
His thoughts are miles away. I haven’t changed; I’m like I was right from the start. Perhaps he didn’t really want to marry me. Wouldn’t care if we had to be poor or if I never saw an almond tree; wouldn’t care about anything if he’d just want me still.’ Her thoughts were tangled: Giles, Amelia, Giles, the almond grove, Giles, the wild excitement of the weeks when she’d first known him, the gradual deepening into what she felt for him now. Probably he’d only wanted her because she’d been a virgin, not like the others he’d had in the past – in the past and since, too, probably. Making herself sit straighter in his chair, rubbing her handkerchief over her tear-blotched face, she consciously forced herself to imagine the future she could make for herself. She’d show him she could manage very well on her own. She’d surprise him with the success she’d make. One day she might even make him proud of her. Tomorrow she’d go and see Señor Cajore and tell him she was prepared to pay his price. The elderly man was keen to sell his land quickly and join his daughter in Granada; he had agreed to leave this year’s crop to be harvested. Probably the workers would stay on. Yes, she would do it. She’d advertise in the county magazines in England, an advertisement with a picture of Finca el Almendros, the Spanish home of Giles Lampton and his wife Tessa. She would write a short paragraph to the effect that while Giles Lampton was writing, his wife Tessa tended the almond trees. Under that there would be a second picture, one she had taken of the almond grove last February when it had been a sea of blossom. She had a goal, although at the back of her mind there was the knowledge that in part the challenge was to prove to Giles that she was capable. She would let him see that she was a force to be reckoned with. And so her day ended, her mind set firmly on the success she would make.

The flight to Los Angeles never seemed to end. Giles sipped the champagne the stewardess brought him, but when it was lunchtime he only played with his meal. Thankful to be alone, away from everyone he knew, he let his mind go back some two months to the evening of his arrival in London when he had met Adrian Wilmot at a cocktail party in London.

‘Yes, Giles managed to get here in time. Come and meet him,’ he’d heard Claudette Malone, one of his numerous acquaintances, say. ‘Giles, I have an admirer of yours wanting to meet you. This is Adrian Wilmot, Giles Lampton. I’ll leave you to get to know each other; I see Hamish just coming in.’ And she’d left them while they’d been at the handshaking stage.

‘I feel I know you already,’ Adrian had said, his greeting taking Giles straight back to the afternoon he had met Tessa. ‘The pictures you paint of that village, Burghton, and the folk there; I tell you, they do what every good book should: you read and get transported. It’s as if one knows every bend in the village street, every flower in Mrs Boyce’s hat.’

‘That’s what every writer likes to hear. They’ve all been part of my own life so long now that they’re pretty well family,’ Giles had answered, making sure his manner was what his new acquaintance would expect. But Adrian’s reply had taken him completely by surprise.

‘I boast about you back home. A stretch of the imagination, I guess, to say that we’re cousins, but if your mother had brought you over with her when she married my uncle that’s how we would have been. Couple of young bucks around the same age.’

‘My mother? I’ve had no communication with her for years. Is she well?’

‘Gee man, you didn’t get told? She died, oh, I guess it must be about four years ago. And it was a mercy to see her go after the way she had changed. I remember her as a bright and pretty woman when I first knew her.’

Bright? No. Bright wouldn’t have been the word Giles would have used when he remembered the years at the rectory, years when even as no more than eight years old he had looked forward to boarding school. Looking back down the years he’d answered with more honesty than tact.

‘Children don’t see their mothers as pretty, I don’t expect. She and I were never close; we didn’t like each other.’

‘But that’s awful, man! To love your mother is just human nature.’

‘To me it wasn’t. You say she changed, changed from the pretty, bright creature you first remembered, that’s what you said.’

‘I guess there are many facets to the disease. No one guessed what was wrong when she started getting moods of depression. She had every comfort money could buy and a husband who idolized her. No one could understand the reason for her depression and flashes of temper, not even her doctor. As she got worse she was under a psychiatrist but nothing snapped her out of it. As time went on, her walk got unsteady and her movements sort of uncontrolled. That’s when the medic put her on to a specialist.’

‘So what was wrong with her?’

‘They called it Huntington’s disease. I don’t know much about it except what it did to her and in the last few years to Pamela, too – your half sister.’

‘Is it infectious, then?’

‘It can’t be. She’d been gone a year or more when Pam started with it,’ Adrian had said, passing his cigarette case to Giles. Then, holding his lighter to Giles, after inhaling deeply, he continued, ‘But hers is quick – she’s going downhill so fast I see a change in her every time I visit. Certainly she gets depressed, but then who wouldn’t in her position? No control over her movements, she flings her arms out as if they have a will of their own, her body sort of dips and swoops when she talks to you, and even worse her speech is getting so slurred it’s hard to understand. When she walks she never knows where her feet will touch the ground. Poor kid – so far her brain is OK, but that just makes it harder. Can’t even cut her own food and feed herself, it’s as if her limbs have a life of their own. Her mother got like that, too, but in her case she got dementia, lost track over her mind and her body. My uncle has a nurse living in the house for Pam. Tell you, though, he’s turned into a real old man years before his time. Nothing worse than standing by and being helpless. Like I say, he worshipped your mother and now he has to stand by and watch Pamela.’

‘But if they know what’s the matter, can’t they do something for her?’ Giles had been impelled to ask the question, but he felt he knew the answer.

‘One day they’ll come up with a cure, no doubt, but that day hasn’t come. Hey, though, man, I’ve done all the talking. Now it’s your turn. Do you have a wife here? Or, like me, do you like to be fancy free?’

‘My wife and daughter are in Spain. That’s where we live. I’m only in London for a short stay on business. You’re working over here?’

And so the conversation had been steered away from the tragedy of which Giles had been ignorant.

Two days later, much sooner than usual, Giles had returned to the finca. Usually when he came home he wanted nothing more than to be with Tessa, wanting her as a thirsty man might want water. She was pure and innocent; she made no secret of her love for him as a more sophisticated woman might. But after that brief absence his return had been different. From the moment of his arrival she had been aware of a change in him and had felt hurt and rejected.