The Hidden Years (73 page)

Ian was still waiting for her response. She looked at him
as bravely as she could and saw from his eyes that he had guessed what
the situation was between Lewis and herself. There was compassion and
understanding in the way he was watching her, but there was sadness as
well.

'I will go and see Edward,' she said quietly, ignoring
Lewis's barely checked protest.

'If you'd like me to come with you—' Ian began,
but she shook her head firmly.

'No, Ian. Thank you, but it's all right.'

'You've no need to be afraid of him now,' Ian reassured
her. 'I know what happened yesterday must have terrified you.'

'I'm not afraid,' Liz told him. 'I know that when Edward
has these… these attacks he isn't really responsible.' She
bit down hard on her bottom lip. 'What will happen to him, Ian? Will
he…?'

'If the drug therapy works and he agrees to keep it up, it
should ensure that his outbreaks of rage are controlled. Of course, no
one can take strong drugs over an extended period of time without
suffering some adverse effects. It will mean that he's in a state of
almost constant semi-sedation, and it's too early yet to say quite what
effect that will ultimately have on him. Once he's back
home… Well, we shall just have to monitor the situation very
carefully. What we do know, though, is that those
patients—admittedly patients with far more severe behavioural
problems than Edward—who have already been on the drug for
some time suffer a tremendous drop in motivation, but we are talking
here about patients who for one reason or another are
institutionalised.'

Liz shuddered, far too clearly able to see the picture he
was drawing for her.

When Ian had gone she turned to Lewis with tears in her
eyes. Silently he took her in his arms, comforting her.

'Liz, Liz, I know how you must feel,' he told her rawly.
'But you can't allow your natural pity for Edward to ruin our lives. If
you stayed with him you'd virtually only be performing the duties that
a trained nurse could perform far better. Can't you see, my darling,
he's going to need constant care, constant watching? I know right now
it might seem cruel—'

'I know what you're trying to say,' Liz interrupted him.
'But I can't…I can't just turn my back on him…I
owe him so much.'

'You owe him
nothing
,' Lewis
interrupted her. 'Look, if you must go and see him at least let me come
with you.'

Liz shook her head. This was something she had to do on
her own… Last night, held safely in Lewis's arms, anything
had seemed possible, but today, this morning… She shivered
slightly.

'I'd better go down to the village,' Lewis told her.
'They'll be wondering where on earth I am.'

Liz gave him a drawn smile.

'I'd like to move in here with you,' Lewis continued. 'But
in the circumstances… Last night was something very special,
but while you're Edward's wife, while you're still committed to him,
even if it is only legally… Well, I don't want to tempt fate
by being pompous and saying that it's against my principles to make
love to another man's wife. I think last night showed us both how
fragile my self-control is when it comes to you…' He smiled
at the way her skin took colour, touching her face lightly with his
fingertips, and then less lightly, passion darkening his eyes as he
caught the betraying sound of her quickened breathing.

'I'm not saying this because of any hypocritical desire to
pay lip-service to convention—there's nothing I'd like more
than to tell the whole world that we're in love— but while
you're Edward's wife…'

'I know…' Liz agreed shakily. 'I feel the same
way…'

'So we're agreed, then?' Lewis continued. 'Until the
divorce is set in motion, and you're free to leave Edward, we'll have
to try to make sure that we don't spend too much time alone.'

'That shouldn't be difficult,' Liz told him wryly. 'What
with the mill to run and visiting Edward…' She broke off as
she saw his face, touching his sleeve pleadingly. 'Lewis, you do
understand, don't you? I
must
go and see
him…'

'Yes. I understand,' Lewis agreed gravely. 'I just wish
you'd let me come with you. You've got such a tender heart, my love.
I'm afraid… I'm so afraid that he'll find some way of
keeping you…'

Liz closed her eyes, resting her head on his shoulder.
What could she say? That she was mortally afraid of that as well?

Two hours later, as she followed the nurse into Edward's
private room, she was thinking of Lewis, wishing that she
had
allowed him to come with her after all.

Edward was in bed. He turned his head as she walked into
the room, his expression so listless and dulled that a wave of
compassion swept over her. Behind the dullness she could see in his
eyes the same pleading, agonised expression she had seen in the eyes of
a stray dog she had found starving as it scavenged for food around the
mill.

That dog was now housed in its own kennel at the mill, fed
regularly and petted by her workers.

'Liz… Liz…'

Edward struggled to sit up when he saw her, reaching out
to her with eager hands, his whole expression transformed to one of joy
and relief.

'Liz, I want to come home… I don't like it
here…' Momentarily the joy faded from his eyes. He looked
confused and uncertain, like a child almost, and her heart sank, loaded
down by an unbearable and unwanted weight of compassion and pity.

'Don't let them keep me here, Liz. Tell them that I'm
going home… They don't understand…'

He was starting to tremble. There were tears in his eyes.
They started to roll down his face as he pleaded with her to take him
home.

A terrible feeling of sickness and despair swept over her.
At her side the nurse was clucking professionally and advancing towards
Edward, saying firmly, 'Now, come along. This won't do, will it? Poor
Mrs Danvers is going to think we're mistreating you if you carry on
like this.'

She turned to Liz and told her quietly, 'It does sometimes
affect them like this. It can be a while before we can get the exact
dosage of the drug properly adjusted. It can have a depressive effect
on the nervous system.'

'A depressive effect?' Liz queried uncertainly, horrible
visions of Edward growing distraught and perhaps even trying to take
his own life filling her mind.

'It can do,' the nurse agreed.

As she looked at Edward, as she listened to him, Liz knew
that there was no way she could tell him now that she intended to leave
him. Just for one cowardly moment she wished it were possible for her
to simply walk out of the hospital and out of his life forever, to
collect David from school, and for both of them to walk away from
Cottingdean and make a new life for themselves with Lewis.

But that was impossible.

As she drove back to Cottingdean she wondered how Lewis
was going to react when she told him that she hadn't been able to tell
Edward that their marriage was over.

At first he was angry, but then, when he could see how
upset she was, he groaned and took her in his arms, telling her how
much he loved her, how much he wanted her, and how he hated to see her
so upset.

'Give me time,' she begged him.

'My darling, I don't want to hurt you, but, can't you see,
it isn't going to get any easier? A clean break now…'

'I can't do it,' she told him painfully. 'I just
can't… Oh, Lewis, if you'd seen him today…'

She started to cry. Lewis took her in his arms, wishing he
could share her compassion for this man whom he only saw as vicious and
dangerous.

Ian had announced that Edward would be in hospital for a
full week.

Every day Liz visited him and every day he begged and
pleaded with her to be allowed home, his distress so great that on each
occasion she came away knowing it was impossible for her to even think
of leaving him while his emotional and mental condition was so unstable.

Lewis had gone from being patient and understanding to
demanding to know if it was him she loved after all.

Liz could understand his feelings, and his fears; she
tried to reassure him, but all she succeeded in doing was increasing
his resentment against Edward.

'
I
love you, Liz, and
I
want you as my wife. If
you
loved
me
in the same way you'd leave Edward. No matter how painful it might be.'

'Just as you would have left your wife in the same
situation?' Liz challenged quietly.

'Yes. Of course I would…' he began and then
stopped, telling her abruptly, 'It's no use, is it? We're just going
round and round in circles. Edward comes home tomorrow. I hate myself
for doing this to you, Liz, but I don't have any alternative. Either
you tell him that you're leaving then, or…' He hesitated and
then looked at her and said flatly, 'Or I'll have no alternative but to
assume that, no matter how much you might
say
you
love me, that love isn't strong enough or compelling enough to make you
want to be with me no matter what the cost.'

'Oh, Lewis… Please don't… Can't you
see
it isn't the cost in terms of my own guilt or pain? It's
Edward—'

'Edward, Edward, always Edward. What about us, Liz? What
about me? Don't you think
I'm
suffering, hurting?
Don't you think
I'm
terrified of losing you?

'I'm giving you twenty-four hours, Liz. Twenty-four hours
in which to decide whether it's me you want or him.'

For a long, long time after he had gone she sat motionless
in her sitting-room, staring into space, unable to see anything other
than his face and the pain in his eyes. Why was she even hesitating?
She
loved
him. She wanted to be with him more
than anything else on earth. But then there was Edward…
Edward who looked at her with such helpless and pleading
eyes… Edward who cried her name every time she walked away
from him, Edward who was coming home tomorrow.

She hardly slept, her vivid, painful nightmares of
emotional anxiety and unhappiness draining her small store of energy so
that in the morning she was heavy-eyed and exhausted.

In the garden she picked some fresh flowers and then took
them inside. The phone rang while she was arranging them and her heart
leapt, her fingers trembling as she went to answer it. It wasn't Lewis,
though, and as she replied automatically to the caller's concerned
enquiries about Edward's progress she felt the ache in her heart
intensify. She wanted to be with Lewis so much; would give up anything,
everything, to be with him, but she was not free to do
so…she was not free to make others suffer so that she could
be happy.

When the ambulance arrived and the men helped Edward out
and into his chair, she was appalled to see how gaunt he had become,
how much weight he had lost.

Chivers was giving the men instructions as to where he was
to be taken. For a moment she stood outside the small group, her heart
and body gripped by iron bands of pain, and then she saw that Edward
was looking at her and she forced herself to smile and step forwards.

As she reached his chair he took hold of her hand,
gripping it almost painfully.

'Don't let them take me away again, Liz, will you?' he
begged her as he was wheeled inside.

The change in him shocked and upset her. In the week he
had been away he had changed, or so it seemed, from a man to a
dependent child.

Was the change caused purely by his medication or did it
go deeper? She shivered as she followed him indoors. Twenty-four hours,
Lewis had said. Twenty-four hours.

It was while she was settling Edward in bed, and Chivers
was downstairs making a pot of tea, that Edward took hold of her hand
and said huskily, 'Ian told me about… about what I did to
you, Liz. I didn't mean to hurt you…' He started to shake,
tears filling his eyes. 'Don't ever leave me…'

She couldn't speak. Her own emotions were too
raw… too painful. When Chivers came in with the tea she
escaped to her own room to fling herself down full-length on her bed
and to wish there were some way she could just close her eyes and make
all the problems disappear.

An hour later Chivers came to find her, his face creased
in worried lines of concern.

'It's the Major,' he told her anxiously. 'I don't think
he's very well…'

'Not well…? What…?'

'He seems to have some kind of fever,' Chivers told her.

Quickly she hurried into Edward's room. He was flushed and
feverish, his eyes too bright in his overheated face.

'I think we'd better send for Ian,' Liz told Chivers
quietly.

When Ian came he examined Edward and then announced
gravely that he suspected that Edward might have succumbed to a
gastro-enteritis infection.

'It started in the maternity ward,' Ian explained to them.
'Normally an adult of Edward's age would be strong enough to fight it
off, but in Edward's case…'

He looked so grim that Liz knew immediately that he was
extremely concerned.

While he was talking to her the phone rang and she knew it
would be Lewis wanting to know if she had spoken yet to Edward.

Her twenty-four hours were not yet up but she couldn't
bring herself to speak to Lewis and explain what had happened, not with
someone else listening, and so she let the phone ring unanswered.

'Edward is going to need constant nursing,' Ian warned
her. 'If you like I could arrange for someone…'

Liz shook her head.

'No, I think Chivers and I can manage between us, and
Edward is upset enough as it is…'

'Yes,' Ian agreed. 'Unfortunately it was necessary to keep
him hospitalised in order to stabilise his condition and his
medication, but I agree with you that it has had a severe effect upon
him.'

Throughout the night Liz and Chivers took it in turn to
minister to Edward. There was no doubt that he was gravely ill. At
times he was almost delirious, and, as at last the cold grey dawn
broke, Liz watched exhaustedly as he drifted into an uneasy sleep and
acknowledged the painful truth.