Kitabı oku: «Campaign For Loving»

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

AS she unlocked the door of her Mini, Jaime glanced quickly at her watch, expelling a faint sigh of relief. Three o’clock. She still had plenty of time to pick up her three-year old-daughter, Fern, from playschool.

At first, when her mother had suggested she move back to Dorset, she had been dubious. She and Blake had lived in London during the brief eighteen months of their marriage and she had been reluctant to move away. Now she could acknowledge that her reluctance had stemmed from her hope that Blake would come looking for her and beg her to go back to him. For a girl of twenty-three she had been extremely naive, she thought sardonically. The unflattering alacrity with which Blake had accepted the challenge she had flung at him in the heat of her tempestuous outburst ought to have warned her, but it hadn’t. It had taken Suzy Monteith to do that. Suzy had worked with Blake on the Globe’s Foreign Affairs team for several years and Blake had never made any secret of the fact that they had at one time been lovers. Suzy had never liked her Jaime realised with the benefit of hindsight, and no doubt she had thoroughly enjoyed telling her of her husband’s request to his editor that he be sent abroad to cover the war in El Salvador, only twenty-four hours after she had accused him of putting his job before his marriage, more or less giving him an ultimatum to choose between her and working for the Globe.

Suzy had called round on the pretext of inviting them both to a party she was giving. But Jaime hadn’t even waited for Blake to come home that evening, she had simply packed her things and gone round to a friend’s flat where she had stayed for two weeks, willing Blake to appear and beg her to come back to him.

Of course he hadn’t done and by then she had known that the possibility that she might be pregnant was a certainty. She had written to him then, an angry bitter letter to which he didn’t reply, making it obvious that he didn’t want her or their child—she had offered him a choice and he had made one—excluding her completely from his life. Her pregnancy had wrapped her in an anaesthetising shawl which numbed all pain. Blake’s letters she returned unopened, accepting her mother’s suggestion that she return home simply because she had no means of supporting herself, and was was determined not to accept any money from Blake. He hadn’t wanted a child—he had made that more than clear to her. His lifestyle could barely accommodate a wife, never mind the responsibility of children, and that had been another subject for contention between them.

The truth was that they should never have married, Jaime thought as she manoeuvred her car down the bumpy lane that led from the old school hall she used for her dance and exercise studio to the village. And it was her fault that they had married. All Blake had wanted was an affair—but she had been naive and very much in love. When he discovered that she was still a virgin he had given in to the subtle pressure she had put on him and, within six months of meeting, they had been married.

Right from the start she had known that she wasn’t really equipped to enter Blake’s world. Shy and rather retiring by nature, she had gone to London at the urgings of a schoolfriend and her mother, and although she quite enjoyed her job as a secretary in a busy advertising agency, she had never really lost her longing for the peace and relative simplicity of the village she had grown up in. She had met Blake at a party, flattered and slightly bemused that he should single her out for attention. She knew she wasn’t exactly unattractive but she had lived in London long enough by then to realise that London males expected more than a heart-shaped face, deep blue eyes, black hair and a willow-slim body. They wanted women who could converse with them on their own level, sharp witty women who didn’t blush and fumble awkwardly; women who were as sophisticated and worldly as they were themselves.

She had recognised Blake instantly from a current affairs television programme he had participated in, but the effect of his lean, suntanned features and his air of cool cynicism were far more devastating in real life man they were on the television screen. She had had the impression that his green eyes were laughing at her, but when, seconds later, they roved her body with a sensual appraisal that was almost a physical caress, she hadn’t been able to hide her response from him. Blake! Even now, just thinking about him made her pulses race and her mouth go dry. He had been, at first, a patient and then a very passionate lover, drawing her out of her shell of shy reserve, teaching her to please him and find joy in her own pleasure. As befitted a man who lived on the edge of danger, he brought excitement and challenge into her life, but she was constantly worried that she would never be enough for him; that after a while her inability to meet him as an equal would lead him to grow bored with her. Before their marriage he had dated sophisticated, glamorous women, and Jaime had always secretly compared herself to them and found herself wanting. If she hadn’t blurted out to him that she loved him and that he would be her first lover, would he still have wanted to marry her?

‘He married you because that was the only way he could get you into bed,’ Suzy had told her tauntingly, ‘but you’ll never keep him—he’s bored already. You see, Blake’s like that. When he wants something, he goes after it single-mindedly, that’s what makes him such a good reporter. He wanted you because you were a challenge.…’

And she, instead of trying to understand him, had begged him to give up his job and find another one that would mean less travel. That had been the cause of their final row.… Perhaps, because her own father had died when she was so young, she had always cherished in her mind a clear picture of what she wanted her life to be, and that picture contained herself, her husband and their two children, living cosily in a village very like the one she had been brought up in; a safe, secure little world, a universe away from Blake’s lifestyle.

People thought she had got over him and her marriage to him. She talked openly to Fern about her father; she answered whatever questions people asked her, but only she knew the truth. She still loved Blake as desperately now as she had done the day she left him. But at least in the intervening four years she had achieved some maturity, she reflected as she brought her Mini to a halt outside the playschool building. At least she had finally accepted that Blake had the right to make his own decisions about his career and his life, but that didn’t stop her regretting her folly in leaving him. If she had stayed, perhaps they could have worked something out… perhaps.… Angrily, she dragged her mind away from the past. Blake had made it more than clear how much he regretted their marriage. He had never even asked to see Fern. He hadn’t wanted a child and, although he had offered to support them financially, he had made no attempt to get to know his daughter.

Charles had told her she ought to get a divorce. She had known Charles Thomson since her schooldays, and she knew, without any conceit, that he would marry her tomorrow if she gave him any encouragement. It was ironic that Charles was tailormade to fit her childhood image of the perfect husband and father, but he was as exciting as cold rice pudding, and her body, which had been awakened and tutored by Blake’s, instinctively repudiated him as a lover.

She knew why she had never bothered to get a divorce. She had no wish to marry again, but what about Blake? Was it just that he had never had the time between assignments to bring their marriage to a formal end, or was it simply that, having married once, he had no intention of repeating his mistake? Unlike her, Blake did not seem to lack congenial companions of the opposite sex. Over the years, she had seen him featured in several newspaper photographs as the escort of glamorous women.

‘Mummy… Mummy.…’

The impatient and reproving voice of her daughter checked her thoughts. Fern was all Blake’s child. She had her father’s unruly, dark brown hair and his green eyes. And her personality held echoes of Blake’s as well. A pragmatic, intelligent child, she sometimes gave Jaime the uncomfortable feeling that their roles were reversed and that she was the child. She even seemed to accept her own lack of a father. She had seen his photograph and knew that he lived and worked in London, but seemed to accept that his life lay apart from theirs.

‘… and Mrs Childs told us a story… but I knew it wasn’t real. Frogs can’t turn into princes, not really.…’

Jaime glanced into her daughter’s scornful green eyes and sighed. She herself had been at least ten before she had finally and reluctantly abandoned fairy stories.

‘You’re daydreaming again…’ the small firm voice accused. ‘Granny says you’ve always got your head up in the clouds.…’

When Jaime repeated this comment to her mother later in the evening when Fern was in bed, Sarah Cummings laughed. Married at eighteen, a mother at nineteen, she was, in Jaime’s view, far too young-looking and vigorous to be anyone’s grandmother. A partner in a thriving antique business in the local market town her mother had the knack of drawing people to her, Jaime reflected watching her. Her once fair hair was tinged with grey now, but she still had the same youthful figure she had always had, and she still seemed to radiate that special sort of energy that Jaime always associated with her.

‘Fern’s like me,’ her mother commented pragmatically, ‘a down-to-earth Taurean.…’

‘Umm, I was thinking today how like Blake she is.…’

‘Don’t tell me you’re worrying about her lack of father again,’ Sarah said drily, correctly interpreting her remark. ‘Well, if you’re thinking of marrying Charles to provide her with one, I shouldn’t bother. She’s already running rings round him.’

That Charles found it difficult to talk to her young daughter Jaime already knew. An only child himself, he was always uneasy in Fern’s presence and she seemed to know it and take advantage of his awkwardness.

‘You’re not worrying about the studio, are you?’ Sara asked her daughter, noticing the frown pleating her fair skin. ‘I thought it was just about beginning to pay its way.’

‘Yes, it is.’ At first on her return to her home Jaime had been wholly dependent on her mother, but once Fern had started playschool, she had trained in exercise and dance, and then, when she was qualified, she had opened her own school which was beginning to get an excellent reputation locally. She was fortunate in being able to rent a now-empty school hall at a very reasonable cost, and the knowledge that she had achieved something for herself through her effort and skill had boosted her self-confidence. Because she always looked so calm and self-possessed, few people guessed at the deep sense of inadequacy she suffered from. Indeed, it was only since she had left Blake that she had come to terms with it herself.

‘So, what’s worrying you?’ her mother probed.

‘Charles came to see me today. He’s heard that Caroline means to sell the Abbey to a property developer and that it’s going to be knocked down and a housing estate built.’

‘Mmm… I shouldn’t think she’ll be able to go ahead with the sale. The Abbey is a listed building, you know.’

‘And Caroline can be very determined.’

Jaime had gone to school with Caroline Travers, although they had never been good friends. Caroline’s father had made a fortune in industry and had bought the Abbey and retired there. Caroline had inherited quite a substantial sum from him on his death, but she was a lady with very expensive tastes and she had never liked the Abbey.

‘Charles wants me to go round and have a word with her—try to persuade her to reconsider.…’

‘Why doesn’t he go himself?’ Sarah asked forthrightly. ‘Really, the man is a fool. I honestly believe he’s terrified that Caroline would seduce him.’

Jaime grinned at her mother’s percipience. ‘He did say that he thought the initial approach would be better coming from me—a “woman to woman appeal”,’ Jaime quoted.

‘“Woman to man eater” doesn’t he mean?’ her mother quipped. ‘Really, Charles is impossible. I don’t know why you bother with him.’

‘Because he’s an old friend and he’s my solicitor.…’

‘And he’s also a very safe wall to hide behind. Jaime, you’re twenty-six, and a very attractive woman, but you behave as though you’ve voluntarily gone into purdah.…’

‘You were even younger when you were widowed.…’

‘Yes, but I didn’t eschew all male company because of it.…’

‘But you’ve never remarried.’

‘No, because I preferred being single. You don’t. You need marriage, Jaime, I never did. I was too independent to commit myself to the sort of relationship marriage was in my day. I loved your father and I missed him terribly, but I didn’t live like a nun the way you do. Blake.…’

‘I don’t want to talk about him.…’

Jaime turned away, hoping that her face wouldn’t betray her. Her mother didn’t know that she still loved Blake, and every time she mentioned him, Jaime retreated from the conversation like a flower curling protectively back on itself. Her mother had liked Blake. They had got on well together, chatting with an ease that had left her envious when she heard Blake’s deep laughter mingling with her mother’s. She had been jealous of the ease with which they became at home with one another, just as she had been jealous of anyone who got close to her husband. It was no wonder he had lost his temper with her, she reflected as she went into the kitchen on the pretext of wanting a drink. When she thought about it, it was a miracle he had stayed with her so long as he had. No man likes jealous scenes, and on occasions she had behaved like a spoiled child, demanding more and more of his time and attention because of her deep-rooted insecurity, her inability to believe that he loved and needed her with the same intensity with which she loved and needed him. She had created an atmosphere which must have been claustrophobic, driving him away from her in her frantic attempts to keep him with her. No one would ever know how much she regretted her behaviour, or how much she longed for a second chance, she thought as she reached automatically for the coffee. Her mother thought the subject of Blake was taboo because she hated him. That was what she had claimed when she first came home, driven to say so because she couldn’t admit the truth, and she had never corrected that misconception.

When Charles commiserated with her about her marriage she had to grit her teeth to stop herself from telling him the truth—that the faults were all on her side. There had hardly been a night in the three years since Fern’s birth when she hadn’t longed for Blake’s presence, and yet she couldn’t regret Fern who had, in her way, been the reason for that final argument. Knowing that she might be pregnant, and that her pregnancy had been the result of her deliberate carelessness, she had panicked when Blake had declared quite firmly that he didn’t want children. But what was the use of raking over the past?

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said to her mother when she carried the coffee tray back into the small sitting room. ‘Perhaps I ought to tell Charles to start divorce proceedings.’

Because she was bending over the tray, she missed the brief frown that touched her mother’s forehead, and when she looked up it was gone, the older woman’s face enviably serene.

‘Charles is organising a committee to formally protest against any plans to pull down the Abbey,’ Jaime told her mother. ‘He wants me to be the secretary.’

‘Will you do it?’

‘Umm, I think so. It’s a beautiful old building.’

‘Talking of beautiful old buildings, I’ve booked my holiday at last. Ten days in Rome, in a month’s time.’

‘You mean that Henry is actually letting you go on your own?’

Henry Oliver was her mother’s partner in the antique business, and had been her faithful admirer for as long as Jaime could remember.

‘That’s one of the advantages of being independent,’ Sarah pointed out with a smile. ‘I don’t have to ask him.’

A week later, carefully noting down the minutes of the meeting Charles had called to discuss ways and means of preventing the Abbey from being destroyed, Jaime pushed a wayward strand of dark curling hair out of her eyes.

‘You look about sixteen, poring over that notebook,’ an admiring male voice whispered in her ear. ‘How about letting me take you out for dinner when this is over?’

‘No thanks, Paul.’

Paul Davis was their local celebrity, the Managing Director of their local radio station. He was also married, although he made no attempt to hide his many affairs from his wife.

‘Spoilsport.’

Jaime returned her attention to the meeting. Charles was speaking, and she groaned inwardly, knowing his propensity for long and dull speeches. Fern was with Mrs Widdows next door, as Sarah Cummings was also out that evening, and Jaime had promised that she would be back by eight. It was seven now. Paul Davis was also glancing at his watch, and when Charles paused he made full use of the opportunity to stand up and bring the meeting to a rather abrupt halt. Charles looked pained and flustered. ‘Rather like an irritated St Bernard,’ Jaime thought watching him.

‘I hadn’t finished speaking,’ he complained to Jaime in aggrieved accents later. ‘Have you been to see Caroline yet?’

‘No, I’ll go tomorrow. But she and I were never friends, Charles, and I don’t think an approach from me will do the slightest good.’

‘Perhaps not, but at least she’d know that we mean to do something. It is a listed building after all.…’

Jaime thought of other listed buildings which had become piles of rubble in dubious circumstances, but said nothing—if she didn’t leave soon, she’d be late for Fern.

Her route took her past the entrance to the Abbey. As she drove past, a car was turning in at the gates, and she caught a glimpse of a male outline before the car disappeared. One of Caroline’s lovers? If so, this man must be rather more wealthy than they usually were. He had been driving a menacing-looking black Ferrari.

‘No… look, you do it this way.…’ Fern’s clear, high-pitched voice reached her as she knocked on Mrs Widdows’ door.

‘I was just showing Airs Widdows how to make a house,’ she explained when she saw Jaime. ‘A man telephoned after you’d gone out and asked to speak to Granny. He asked me what my name was, and I told him. He was nice.’

It was rare for Fern to make any comment on other adults, but as her mother was out Jamie was unable to question her about the unknown male who had won her daughter’s approval.

It was perhaps cowardly of her to take Fern with her the following afternoon when she finally plucked up the courage to go and see Caroline, but Charles had telephoned in the morning, insisting that she go, and having Fern with her gave her something else to worry about other than the coming interview.

Caroline had never liked her; Jaime knew that they were worlds apart for all the similarity in their ages. Caroline had come to her wedding, and she could vividly remember the predatory look in her eyes when she saw Blake. There must be very few women immune to Blake’s wholly male, sexual aura. During their brief marriage she had soon come to recognise the look in other women’s eyes which said that they were imagining him as their lover. It had driven her into paroxysms of jealous insecurity. How could Blake genuinely prefer her to these sexy, assured women?

As it was a pleasant day she had elected to walk to the Abbey, her decision in no way connected with the fact that walking would delay the inevitable confrontation with Caroline, she taunted herself as she fastened Fern’s sandals.

One day her daughter was going to be an extremely attractive woman, and when she was Jaime was determined that she would have far more self-confidence than she had ever had.

‘I like this green dress,’ Fern told her complacently. ‘It’s my favourite.’

‘It matches your eyes,’ Jaime told her. ‘Are you ready?’

‘Yes, I like your dress too, Mummy.’

It had been a present from her mother the previous year. It was quite simple, white crinkle cotton, with shoe-string straps and an A-line skirt, the ideal dress for a hot, sunny afternoon. Her skin tanned well and the white fabric showed off her smooth golden arms and shoulders. She had taken more care than usual with her make-up and hair. When she looked happy, her eyes glowed like sapphires, Blake had once told her, and he had bought her a sapphire engagement ring to match them. She still had it, but could not wear it because of the memories it brought with it. She felt her heart contract with pain and regret.

Fern was an entertaining companion, chattering away at her side as they headed for the Abbey, Jaime matching her steps to her daughter’s slower ones.

‘It’s a very big house, isn’t it?’ Fern commented when they turned into the drive, ‘but I think I like Granny’s cottage best.’

Fern moved with a natural grace Jaime noticed, watching her daughter, unaware that her lithe delicacy had been inherited from her. Jaime had always enjoyed dancing. The discipline of teaching others, of helping them and watching their own appreciation grow with ability gave her an intense feeling of satisfaction. Fern tugged on her hand as she bent to examine a clump of ragged robin, and not for the first time Jaime gave mental thanks for the fact that her daughter had such an equable and sunny temperament. Fern would never suffer as she had done from an excess of sensitivity and over-emotionalism. ‘You’re too hard on yourself,’ her mother always said when she voiced this fact. ‘You have many things to recommend yourself, Jaime, you just don’t realise it.’ It sometimes seemed to Jaime that her mother had been trying to bolster her self-confidence all her life, but she had just never possessed the sturdy independence which characterised both her mother and her daughter.

The Abbey loomed before them, grey and ivy-coloured. Although not a beautiful house, it possessed a mellow air of continuity that had always appealed to Jaime. It had once been an Abbey, although little of the original building remained. It had been rebuilt during the reign of Charles the Second and, although Caroline complained that she found the panelled downstairs rooms gloomy and depressing, Jaime loved them.

Mrs March, Caroline’s housekeeper, answered the door, beaming at Fern, who responded with a happy grin of her own.

‘Why don’t I take her into the kitchen and give her some of my home-made gingerbread?’ she suggested, not realising that she was depriving Jaime of the emotional support she felt she needed. ‘Miss Caroline’s in the drawing room,’ she added.

No doubt Mrs March knew quite well why she was here, Jaime reflected, watching her daughter follow the housekeeper without a backward glance. The panelling had been removed from the drawing room by Caroline’s father, but the graceful stucco ceiling remained, and the Adam fireplace added by a Georgian owner. Caroline had completely refurnished the house when she inherited it. Personally, Jaime loathed the cold starkness of the modern Italian furniture she had chosen, but there was no doubt that it made a stunning setting for her startling beauty. Dark red hair framed her face in an aureole of curls, the leather trousers and silk blouse she was wearing being a soft khaki colour which emphasised her colouring. As always, she was immaculately made-up. She had played at modelling when she first left school and had picked up enough tips to achieve what always seemed to Jaime to be an effortlessly glamorous look. She reminded Jaime of the women who had pursued Blake, both before and after their marriage. Brittle, expensive, beautiful predators who lived by their own rules. Women she could never hope to compete with. ‘Why bother?’ her mother had once said lightly when she had tried to confide her fears to her. Blake had chosen to marry her, but she had never been able to rid herself of the conviction that, somehow, she had coerced him into marriage and that had been something she hadn’t been able to tell her mother. She had been too deeply ashamed to admit to her that she didn’t have the strength to be as independent as Sarah was. She had always felt that, secretly, she must have been a disappointment to her mother; that although she had never shown or expressed any impatience, there must have been some. ‘You underestimate yourself too much Jaime.’ That was what she had always said, and Jaime would have been surprised if she had known that, far from comparing her with Caroline to her own discredit, most people would have found far more appeal in her own natural beauty and quiet intelligence than in Caroline’s showy, pushy manners.

‘Well, well if it isn’t Miss Goody Two Shoes,’ Caroline mocked. The nickname was a throw-back to their schooldays, and Jaime managed to hold back the humiliating scald of colour she could feel rising up under her skin.

‘No need to ask what you’re doing here,’ Caroline continued tauntingly. ‘But what happened to the cavalry?’

‘If you mean Charles, he’s had to go to Dorchester to a meeting,’ Jaime responded evenly. ‘Caroline, surely it can’t be true that you intend to sell the Abbey to a developer?’

‘Why not?’ Caroline asked carelessly, ‘After all, it’s mine to do with as I choose.’ Without inviting Jaime to sit down, she drifted elegantly over to one of the uncomfortable-looking modern chairs, crossing her legs at the ankle, sure of herself as a woman in a way that Jaime felt she could never emulate.

‘But it is a listed building,’ Jaime reminded her quietly. Caroline shrugged. ‘So what.… If you feel so strongly about it, you can always put in a more attractive bid. The current one is £250,000.’ She laughed unpleasantly at Jaime’s expression.

The sound of Fern’s excited voice interrupted Jaime’s thought flow. She could see her daughter in the garden, walking towards the French windows, chattering animatedly to the man at her side.

Jaime’s heart seemed to do a somersault and then stop beating as she stared disbelievingly at the dark head bent towards her daughter’s. She started to shake, her sight blurring, the two heads of dark brown hair so similar that they merged into one. Caroline got up and opened the French doors.

‘Blake, darling, there you are. I thought you were writing.…’ There was malice in her eyes as she directed a contemptuous look at Jaime’s white face. ‘You seem to have given poor Jaime rather a shock, didn’t you let her know you were coming?’

As she watched the dark, hawklike profile of her husband turn in her direction, Jaime struggled to retain some composure.

‘Jaime and I aren’t exactly on intimate terms these days.’ The indifferent tone of his voice, the cool aloofness in his green eyes, both combined to increase Jaime’s feeling of nausea. She could scarcely believe that this handsome distant man had once possessed her body; had fathered her child.

‘I agree.’

‘Umm, it seems hard to believe that you were ever that,’ Caroline drawled, ‘but of course there is Fern.’

Fern! Trying to control the shudders of shocked reaction coursing through her, Jaime looked into her daughter’s shining eyes.

‘This is my Daddy,’ she told Jaime importantly, ‘I found him in the garden. He was looking at some flowers. I told him my name and he said that he was my Daddy.’

‘Fern, it’s time to go home.’ How weak and faint her voice sounded. ‘Go and say thank you to Mrs Marsh for your gingerbread and then we’ll go.’

‘I’m sorry about the interruption, Blake,’ she heard Caroline apologising as she hurried Fern away. ‘It’s Mrs Marsh’s fault, she should never have let the child loose in the garden.’

Blake’s response was an indistinct blur that Jaime didn’t stay to hear. Why should she? She already knew how Blake viewed his daughter; in much the same light as he did his wife; as an encumbrance he would prefer to do without.