PENNY JORDAN - To Love, Honour & Betray

In the clear light of the island morning, the sharp angularity of the bones both of her body and her face was almost cruelly revealed. What had, on the girl, been extreme slimness had become, on the woman she was now, an almost bony thinness, the outward expression of her inner frustration and bitterness, as though these deep-rooted feelings that had distorted her life had eaten away at her flesh as thoroughly and destructively as any bodily illness.

‘My God, if only things were different,’ she burst out intensely, her dark eyes flashing as she turned to look at the man lying beside her.

Three years separated them in age—three thousand miles in distance, apart from the brief days and hours they occasionally managed to snatch together, those and the six weeks they shared annually here on the island that belonged to Margot’s mother and his aunt.

Every summer for over twenty years, both of them had come here to be together, away from prying eyes. As first cousins, certain states considered their blood relationship too close for them to marry and legalise their love for each other as Margot so passionately wished they might. Margot wasn’t sure which was the stronger feeling she had for these weeks in the summer—hatred or longing. Longing when they were apart from one another and hatred when she was here because being here meant being aware of the fact that she could never ever have her heart’s desire; that she could never be with Lloyd as she ached and wanted to be with him. As they both wanted her to be with him, she amended hastily. After all, he suffered just as much as she did, yearned just as much as she did … ached, needed, wanted, loved just as much as she did.

They had both known, of course, even before they had fallen in love that such a love was forbidden.

‘But what will happen if I get pregnant?’ Margot had asked Lloyd tremulously the first time they had made love, lying uncomfortably together in the sandy earth amongst the trees, hidden out of sight of the house.

‘You won’t,’ Lloyd had assured her, showing her the condom he had bought.

That had been the beginning of it, the beginning of what to her was a continuous rack of pain from which there was no relief, no cessation, no, not even sometimes in his arms, because always at the back of her mind was the knowledge that their togetherness was only temporary, that ultimately they would have to part and go back to their separate lives.

‘Stay with me,’ she had begged frantically one summer a number of years ago.

‘I can’t. You know that,’ he had told her. ‘I think Carole-Ann might be beginning to suspect something. In fact, I think we might have to—’

‘No!’ Margot had burst out explosively before he could finish. ‘If she does suspect, then we’ll just have to find some way of … She can’t stop us being together, Lloyd. She has you all the time. Does she know how lucky she is to be your wife?’ she had demanded passionately. ‘How much I wish …’

Lloyd had turned and taken her in his arms. ‘You know that can’t be,’ he told her.

‘Oh, Lloyd,’ she cried. ‘God, why does it have to be like this? Why can’t we be together? Go away somewhere—abroad?’

‘You know we can’t do that. How would we live? Both of us are dependent on the business.’

‘The summer’s passing quickly.’ Margot shivered now. ‘Another three weeks and you’ll be going back. Oh, Lloyd, I don’t know how I can bear it.’

Helplessly, she started to cry.

Tiredly, Lloyd closed his eyes. They weren’t young any more. The UCLA branch of their business, which his aunt had originally set up as much to put some distance between him and Margot as anything else, had proved to be extremely profitable and certainly no sinecure. He loved Margot, of course he did, and he always would, but sometimes the intensity of her passion for him, her need, her dependency on him, wore him down.

These six weeks he spent on the island every summer, technically updating his aunt on everything that had been happening with his side of the business, were, for Margot, the pivot of her whole existence.

‘If we didn’t have this, there’d be no point in my going on living,’ she had told him more than once. Increasingly, though, he was guiltily aware that while Margot was so emotionally dependent on him, he was not free to live his own life.

It had been different when they were young. Then he had shared her passion, been as overwhelmed by his feelings for her as she was by hers for him. But now!

He was approaching forty and what did he have to show for it?

In material terms and so far as others were concerned, no doubt he seemed as though he was doing all right. He had a good job, money in the bank, a nice apartment, a new car.

But what about in other terms? What about those aspects of his life that could not be assessed in dollars or possessions?

He was divorced now with two stepdaughters whom he rarely saw, a few friends and Margot….

‘Lloyd, tell me everything’s going to be all right, that we’ll always be together,’ Margot was demanding passionately.

Tiredly, he reassured her but he knew his voice lacked conviction.

What was that noise? Groggily, Claudia tried to focus on the high-pitched ringing sound that had broken into her heavy drugged sleep, the doubled effect of the two pills she had taken so deadening that it was several seconds before she realised that the noise was the telephone and another several more before she came to enough to reach for the receiver.

‘Claudia, it’s Maxine,’ she heard her assistant announcing herself. ‘Is everything OK? I was a bit concerned when you didn’t arrive this morning.’

Guiltily, Claudia started to open her eyes and then widened them quickly in disbelief as she caught sight of her alarm clock. It was gone eleven in the morning. No wonder Maxine had been concerned.

‘Er … I’m sorry, Maxine,’ she apologised hastily. ‘I … I meant to ring you last night to warn you that I’d decided to work at home this morning. I’ve got some paperwork here I need to catch up on.’

It wasn’t completely untrue; she did have paperwork to attend to, Claudia comforted herself several minutes later after she had replaced the receiver.

Paperwork to do , maybe, but she certainly wasn’t in any fit state to accomplish very much, she admitted wearily.

She had slept so deeply that if she had had any bad dreams she certainly couldn’t remember them, but even so, the drugged oblivion of her night’s sleep was just as exhausting as though she had lain sleepless and tormented. The numbing lethargy that still gripped her made her feel both guilty and angry. Quickly, she got out of bed, collected fresh underwear and headed for the shower.

But as she stood beneath its stinging, reviving spray, she acknowledged that at least her sleeping tablets had been able to keep last night’s nightmares at bay.

She stopped soaping herself and stood motionless beneath the water, shuddering as she recalled the eager happiness in Tara’s voice when she told her excitedly about her plans. And she, what had she done to prepare and protect her precious, much-loved daughter from what she now feared and dreaded lay ahead of her?

Slow, painful tears seeped from beneath her closed eyelids as Claudia acknowledged what she had done, or rather, not done. When faced with a crisis, the need to be strong and independent, to take control and confront the danger facing her, she had retreated to the security of the kind of behaviour more appropriate to her mother’s generation by asking, ‘Have you told your father yet?’

And then she had compounded her irresponsibility by escaping into a drug-induced sleep that had achieved nothing other than to worry her loyal and hard-working assistant.

But what could she do, what could she say? Maybe, after all, she was over-reacting, over-worrying.

If only. If only.

As she stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel, Claudia caught sight of her reflection in the bathroom mirror. The anguish she was feeling was clearly revealed in the drawn, drained tension of her expression. The last time she had seen that particular look on her face had been during the early days when she and Garth had agreed to divorce.

Garth …

It had been foolish of her to react so emotionally last night and try to ring him. She knew from Tara that he had been dating on a casual basis for the past few months. Tara had complained to her that she didn’t think the thirty-odd-year-old woman he had apparently been seeing was good enough for her father.

Like her, Garth hadn’t had anyone serious in his life since their marriage had ended, but hardly for the same reasons. Garth was an extremely attractive and very sensual man, the kind of man who, in the early days of their marriage, had been so emotionally as well as openly physically loving with her in public that her friends had often commented enviously to her on the depth and intensity of his love for her.

Perhaps unusually so for a man of his generation and upbringing, Garth was a highly tactile man, both as a lover and a father, and Tara was like him in that respect. She, too, was very much given to loving hugs and kisses while Claudia, as she was the first to acknowledge, tended to wait for the other person to make the first move, to hold herself back a little.

Even now, she disliked being reminded of how much she had missed Garth’s physical warmth in the early days after she had found out the truth, how often she had woken from the wretchedness of her merciless dreams and turned instinctively towards his side of the bed expecting him to be there to reach out for her and hold her close, only to remember that the emotional agony of her waking hours was even greater than that of her nightmares.

She was over that now, of course. Well over it, and as a woman of forty-five, the mother of a grown-up daughter, as well, she did not think it appropriate to allow herself to yearn helplessly like some lovesick teenager for the physical and emotional contact, the closeness of a lover, a someone of her own that her life now denied her. Divorcing Garth had been the right decision, the only decision she could have made in the circumstances. He had, after all, betrayed her and betrayed her in such a way, deceiving her, lying to her so comprehensively and for so long, that there had been no way the damage he had done to their relationship could ever be repaired. So yesterday, why had she turned, yearning so instinctively, to him for help?

Because he was Tara’s father . That was why and that was the only reason why, she assured herself sternly as she went back to her bedroom, securing the towel around her still-damp body, then reaching for the hair-dryer.

Since the break-up of her marriage, she had become fiercely protective, even defensive, about her independence and her ability to face the world alone, to manage whatever problems she might have alone. She had no need of anyone, any man, to lean on, to provide her with emotional support; she had proved that.

Last night, she had panicked, over-reacted unthinkingly with that silly and fortunately unanswered telephone call to Garth. This morning, she thankfully was much more in control of herself … much more herself, she decided firmly.

The hand holding the hair-dryer had started to tremble. Slowly, Claudia put the dryer down and took a deep breath, purposefully counting silently as she released it.

Now, she commanded herself sternly, let’s start again. Today is Thursday. It is nearly twelve noon. You have wasted a whole morning, so what are you going to do with the rest of your day?