The Tender Flame (22 page)

Alice Spink took a step back, dumbfoundedly gathering her wits. Shocked breaths were drawn all round Jan, but it was left to Alice Spink to retaliate.

She was obviously going to do it in style. Never short of words for long, she said with dignity and—to Jan's intense surprise—with approval: ‘Bravo, my girl. I didn't know you had that much explosion in you. My husband
has
always said that I'm a bit too handy at giving out the stick, but I don't yelp when it's turned back on me. Most of what I've said has been related to me by someone else, and I freely admit that I prefer to rely on my own observations. The moment I set eyes on you I figured you out to be a no-nonsense girl with a good head on your young shoulders. You've given me no cause to modify that first snap judgement. Many a stronger person would have quailed at what you've had to tackle. We all admired Annabel Spedding for her courage, but on the quiet we had a sneaking suspicion that she put you through it. And there's none more ashamed than me for letting you get on with it, with never a complaint or a grumble passing your lips, although you must have been hard pressed at times. I reckon we had to blacken somebody else's character to make ours look white. I admit that without a lot of pride, I can tell you.'

‘But you were the first to offer help, Mrs. Spink,' Jan protested.

‘Aye, that's as may be. But I didn't do much pressing when it was turned down. As far as David Spedding is concerned, you're nobody's fool, my girl, and I reckon if anybody's got his measure, it's you. It's not easy to change tune mid air. If you've been one of the crows it's a bit difficult to start singing like a canary, so you'll just have to bide with me for a while. You could perhaps tell me one thing. If he's as
fine
and honourable as you make out, how come he didn't show up for her funeral?'

‘I don't know,' Jan said, the wind taken out of her sails by Alice Spink's deep dip into her own sense of justice. ‘One thing I do know. There will be a perfectly valid reason why he didn't come.'

She held out her hand for the change, turned, and walked out of the shop and smack into David. As the door had been propped open, as it usually was on busy shopping days, he must have heard every word.

‘Exchange is no robbery,' he said taking the full shopping bag from her and entrusting into her hands an oblong box bearing the name Studio Potteries. ‘I couldn't exactly replace the vase I broke.'

In entranced stupefaction she said: ‘Somebody loves me. Praise heaven you couldn't find an exact copy. You . . . er . . . heard?'

‘The whole village heard. Thank you for defending me. You were right, of course. I would have paid my last respects had it been possible. I couldn't attend the funeral because at the time I was in quarantine.'

‘Why didn't you say, instead of letting everybody think the worst of you?'

‘Not everybody. Those in the know would appreciate without explanation that I was forcibly prevented. Those who didn't know would have made too much out of it. It was
more
or less a routine precaution taken after a particular form of experimental work. But to the layman the word quarantine has an awesome ring. It could have started a national scare.'

‘That's what Linda was trying to tell me that time, when you shut her up.'

‘It's better for people not to know certain things.'

‘I'm not people. I'm me.'

‘Yes, but I didn't know you then.'

‘Does your work often put you at risk?'

‘No, of course not.'

She sighed. ‘It was silly of me to ask that, because you wouldn't tell me if it did.'

Of one accord they'd stopped walking. His free hand turned her chin. ‘You're marvellous, Jan. No wonder I love you.'

She gulped. ‘Would you mind repeating that?'

‘I love you,' he said simply and with utter sincerity.

Tears melted her vision. She thought she must have misheard him first time. The confirmation was so unexpected that she almost dropped the replacement piece of pottery. ‘Of all the places to tell me.'

‘I've tried to play the gentleman's waiting game to give you chance to sort out your feelings, not always too successfully because I've come to the conclusion that it's the cad who has the most fun. Come to me soon, Jan.
The
difference in our ages isn't going to afford you protection for much longer, because I'm finding it harder to keep away from you. Do you realise that I am ten years older than you are? You led me to believe it was a mere six years, but a comment of your father's enlarged the gap.'

‘My father told you? When? I thought it was my mother who gave me away.'

‘It was when I had dismissed you and then come to fetch you back. Do you remember that talk your father had with me? He was slightly uneasy about the set-up. He said you were ill-prepared for the hazards that beset young girls, that your impetuosity afforded nil protection, while your trusting nature put you at especially grave risk. He told me I must not amuse myself with you, only he put it a bit stronger than that.'

‘Oh, he couldn't have,' Jan said, flushing with embarrassment. ‘I don't know what I'm going to do with him. It's time he got out of his Victorian parlour.'

‘I liked his bluntness and his concern.'

‘I'm wondering what you said to Dad.'

‘I think I reassured him. I told him I had only put you to bed the once.'

‘You didn't!'

‘Didn't tell him? Or didn't put you to bed?'

‘I was ill. Somebody had to put me to bed. You were the only person there at first, apart from Stephanie, until you got Linda to come.
A
chivalrous man would have skipped over that little episode.'

‘Chivalry is dull.'

Her sense of the absurd came to her rescue and she saw a way of paying him back. ‘You looked after me so solicitously. Not that I remember all that much in my semi-delirious state.' She tried to keep a straight face as she delivered her punch line. ‘I thought you were my father.'

‘I tried that one too. Unfortunately it didn't work for me. I couldn't think of you as my daughter. I had to get Linda in, quick.'

‘Dad looked after me one time when my grandmother was very ill and my mother, like any loving daughter-in-law would, went to nurse her. He couldn't manage the bows and those fiddly little pearl buttons either.'

‘So what chance had I, an inexperienced boy,' he said with a very straight face. On a more serious note he said: ‘What about your grandmother?'

‘She made a marvellous recovery and is fighting fit. She'll outlive us all.'

‘I don't like the emphasis you put on the word fighting. Don't say I've got another hotheaded Ashton to deal with?'

‘Didn't I tell you? Grandmother Ashton is the original fire-eating Ashton. I am but the pale copy.' But there was nothing soft-hued about her joy. It showed in the sparkling exultation of her smile and the glimpse of
heaven
magically brightening her eyes. ‘My grandmother will adore you. When we get back to the cottage, may I phone and tell her about us?' With a shaky laugh she said: ‘Tell me about us, David. I can't seem to take it in.'

‘I love you. Fix that very firmly in your mind, my darling.'

‘Why? Aren't you going to tell me again?'

‘Only every day for the rest of my life. You are my life, my joy, my happiness. I wish I could just pick you up and run off with you. Only I think it will please your parents if we wait to make a slight detour by way of the church.'

‘Yes, I'm inclined to agree with you.'

‘That makes a most pleasant change,' he teased gently. ‘Will they mind having Stephanie dumped on them? I'd like to have you to myself at least for the honeymoon.'

The thought of going on a honeymoon with David almost took her breath away. The only voice at her command was a very insubstantial thing as she replied: ‘They'll enjoy having Stephanie, I know. She makes them feel young.'

‘That's odd. She puts years on me. Most couples can count on a little time entirely to themselves before they start a family. All we can manage is two weeks before we come home to our ready-made daughter. Do you feel cheated, Jan?'

She considered for a moment and then said:
‘I
would dearly love to have some growing-together time just with you, but I wouldn't forfeit Stephanie for it. I love her for herself and she couldn't feel more mine if I'd given birth to her. And I love her for bringing us together. If there hadn't been a Stephanie to care for, I would have locked up Larkspur Cottage, left the key with the solicitor, and had no cause to meet you. It's so frightening it doesn't bear thinking about.'

Blatantly disregarding the fact that they were on a public highway, David pulled her to him and cradled her head against his chest. ‘Don't ever again entertain such a possibility. Never to have met you. Never to have known real happiness, real joy, real fun.'

He held her for a moment, as though he was comforting away that horrible thought. Jan remained very still, feeling very secure.

He began to speak again. ‘I'm no sinner, but then again I'm no saint, and I thank God for caring enough about me to bring someone as wonderful as you into my life. I'm going to devote myself to making you happy. We'll have a marvellous marriage, Jan, I promise. We'll make a good home for Stephanie. Happiness has a magic radiation and ours will brush off on her to make up for the bad start she had in life. And please don't feel too badly of me for not wanting to share our happiness with her from the very beginning. The plans have been passed for the conversion of the two cottages
into
one, and the builders are waiting for me to give the word for them to move in. They can get cracking while we are away on honeymoon, but the work can't possibly be completed in time, so when we return will you mind too much if we move into The Retreat?'

‘I'll love it. We'll rename it The Haven.'

‘If you go on like that, I'll be asking your parents to keep Stephanie on after the honeymoon, until the conversion of the two cottages is completed.'

To think, she once thought he only wanted to marry her because Stephanie needed a mother.

‘I thought that when you asked me to marry you, it was because you'd decided to settle for second best.'

‘Where did you get that dumb idea from?'

‘From you. You said surely one taste of the bitter enchantment was enough, and next time wasn't it better to play safe rather than wait for a fever-pitch romance that might never happen again? I might have missed something out, but that was the essence of it. I knew you meant how you felt for Annabel.'

‘Everything we have ever said to each other seems to have been shadowed by misunderstanding. I never loved Annabel that way. I made the common enough mistake of confusing fascination with love. I didn't know what it was like to love at fever-pitch, or at any pitch, until I met you. When I said what I did, I
was
referring to you and Martin.'

Now it was Jan's turn to look surprised. ‘You can't be serious? There was never anything more than fondness between us.'

‘My jealous streak is very pleased to hear it. It's not how it appeared to me that time I saw you together,' he said with a hint of reproof.

‘That wasn't as it seemed. Martin was taking it out on me because of what another girl did to him. I let him get on with it because I thought it would help him to get the sense of injustice out of his system. He didn't overstep the mark. I would have stopped him if he had.'

‘I was ready to stop him if he had. With my fist. I hope it helped Martin, because I can tell you this, it didn't do me much good. You've a lot to make up to me for.'

Smiling in shy delight at the prospect, Jan said: ‘Oh I will make it up to you. I promise.'

* * *

It took quite a long time, but eventually they returned to the cottage.

Muriel Ashton took one look at their faces, changed colour, hugged Jan, spontaneously raised up to kiss David's cheek, and said: ‘My darlings, I couldn't be more pleased.'

‘We're getting married,' Jan said, even though it was a case of putting the announcement after the congratulations. Turning to David she said: ‘You did say I could
phone
Grandmother to tell her the news?'

No reply.

‘David, will you please put your mother-in-law-to-be down and answer me.'

‘You surely know you don't need my permission for anything. Of course, go ahead and phone. While you're about it, tell her to pack a suitcase because I'm fetching her. A grandmother is an important enough person to be at a combined birthday and engagement celebration.'

Jan let out a gasp of delighted surprise. ‘But David, it's a round trip of four hundred miles.'

‘So what? If you want to come with me I could use the company.'

‘I wish I could. But I can't leave Mother to cope on her own.'

‘There's nothing to cope with. Everything has been taken care of,' Muriel Ashton said decisively.

‘How can it be?' Jan protested. ‘If Grandmother is coming, there will be extra shopping and baking to do and . . .'

It got through slowly to Jan that David and her mother were exchanging knowing looks. And what were they setting up between them? she wondered.

‘I'm sorry, David,' her mother said. ‘You can't say I didn't try.'

‘Thanks anyway, Muriel. For peace's sake, I suppose I must tell her.'

‘Tell me what?' Jan demanded, wishing
these
two conspiritors wouldn't talk to each other as if she wasn't there.

David said with loving indulgence: ‘You are a difficult girl to spring a surprise on, Jan. Even if you stayed, you'd only get in the way, because I've booked a very efficient catering service to do the honours. One grandmother more or less won't make a lot of difference.'