PENNY JORDAN - The Six-Month Marriage

She hadn’t told her father about discovering Blake’s infidelities, and for the first time in her life she had truly appreciated how her mother must have felt. From that to making the decision to leave Flaws valley had been a very short step. Blake had been away at the time buying a new ram and she vividly remembered, tiptoeing downstairs with her suitcase and out through the large flagged kitchen, leaving a note for him on the table. In it she had said simply that she no longer wanted to be married to him. Her pride wouldn’t let her write anything else, and certainly nothing about Miranda Scott who had been one of Blake’s regular girlfriends before he started dating her. She had bumped into Miranda in the library and the other girl had eyed her tauntingly as she told her about the night she had spent with Blake the previous week. Blake had told her that he was buying fresh stock and that he would have to stay in the Cotswolds overnight.

She had asked if she could go with him, thinking that away from the farm she might find it easier to talk to him about her unhappiness with their marriage. In the months leading up to it she had been thrilled by the way he kissed and caressed her and had looked forward eagerly to their wedding night, but she had spent it alone as she had all the nights that followed, and that had been one of the most galling things of all, the fact that her husband didn’t find her attractive enough to want to make love to her.

But he found Miranda attractive—so attractive that he had taken her to the Cotswolds with him.

At first when she reached London she had used an assumed name, terrified that Blake would try to find her, and terrified that if he did, she wouldn’t have the pride or strength of will to refuse to go back to him. Not that she was under any illusions any more that he wanted her. No, he wanted her father’s land!

Those first six months in London had been bitterly lonely. She had drawn all her money out of her bank account before leaving the valley and there had been enough to support her for the first three months while she took a secretarial course. Her first job she had hated, but then she had found her present job with Alan. She had also enough confidence by then to find herself a solicitor. She could have had her marriage annulled—after all it had never been consummated—but she hadn’t wanted anyone to know the humiliating truth—that her husband hadn’t found her attractive enough to want to consummate it—so instead she had patiently waited out the statutory time before suing for divorce. She had half expected, even then, some reaction from Blake but there had been none and their divorce had become final just five months ago.

Sapphire had been in London seven months before she wrote to her father. Before leaving the valley she had posted a letter to him telling him she was leaving Blake, and saying that nothing would make her come back.

With hindsight she could see how worried her father must have been when he didn’t hear from her, but at the time she had been so concerned with protecting herself both from Blake and from her own treacherous emotions that she hadn’t been able to think past them.

“Do you plan to drive North, or will you go by train?’

Jerked out of her reverie by Alan’s voice Sapphire forced herself to concentrate. ‘I’ll drive,’ she told him. ‘There isn’t a direct train service and driving will save time.’

‘Then you’d better take my car,’ Alan told her calmly, ‘I wouldn’t feel happy about you driving so far in yours.’

It was true that her battered VW had seen better times, and Sapphire felt the same warm glow she always experienced when Alan was so thoughtful. Being married to him would be like being wrapped in insulating fibre; protected. Protected from what? From her past? From her foolish adolescent craving for the love of a man who was simply using her? That’s all over now, Sapphire told herself sharply. Blake means nothing to me now. Nothing at all.

‘Look, why don’t you go home now and get yourself organised,’ Alan suggested. ‘You’re too strung up to be much use here, and you’ll need an early start in the morning. Here are my car keys.’ He frowned. ‘No, I’ll go and fill the tank up first. That should be enough to get you all the way there. And when you arrive, ‘phone me won’t you? I wish there was some way I could come with you.’

‘Dear Alan.’ Sapphire rested her head against his shoulder—a rare expression of physical affection for her. ‘You’re so good to me.’

‘Because you’re worth being good to,’ Alan retorted gruffly. Expressions of emotions always embarrassed him, and as she withdrew from him Sapphire wondered why she should remember so clearly the sensual seduction of the words Blake had written; words which still had the power to move her even now, and yet Blake too was a man of few words, but then unlike Alan, Blake’s words were always pithy and to the point. Blake deplored waste of any kind; a true Sefton; and yet there was something about him that had always attracted and yet frightened her. He had spent several years in the army after leaving university. Perhaps that was where he had developed that hard veneer that was so difficult to get past. Sapphire knew that he had been posted to Northern Ireland, and yet his experiences there were something he never did discuss—not even with her father. When she had commented on it once, her father had simply said, ‘There are some things a man can’t endure to remember, and so for the sake of his sanity he forgets them. War is one of them.’

AN HOUR LATER, gripping the cord of the telephone receiver as she waited for someone to answer the ‘phone, she felt her stomach muscles contract with tension. According to Blake’s letter her father didn’t know he had written, so she must try to pretend that she knew nothing of his illness. The ringing seemed to last for ever, and for one dreadful moment Sapphire pictured her father lying in bed, listening to the demanding sound, too ill to do anything about it, but then the receiver was lifted, the ringing abruptly cut off. Relief made her voice hesitantly husky, ‘Dad, it’s Sapphire.’

The cool male voice, edged with taunting mockery, wasn’t her father’s, and the tiny hairs on her arm stood up in prehensile alarm as she recognised it.

‘Blake?’

‘How very flattering that you should recognise my voice so quickly after all this time.’

‘They say people always remember anything connected with acute trauma,’ Sapphire snapped sharply. ‘Blake, I’ve got your letter. My father, how is he?’

‘Why don’t you come home and see for yourself, or are you still running scared?’

‘What of? You? Of course I’m coming h … back, but I can hardly arrive without warning Dad to expect me.’

‘Very thoughtful. Giving him time to kill the fatted calf is that it? I take it you’re coming alone,’ he added, before she could respond. ‘Flaws Farm only has three bedrooms remember; your father’s in one, his housekeeper’s in the other, and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how the valley will feel about one of its daughters openly co-habiting with a man she isn’t married to—to say nothing of your father’s feelings.’

Gritting her teeth Sapphire responded. ‘I’m coming alone, but only because Alan couldn’t make it. Now may I please speak to my father?’

It was only when Blake put the receiver down that she realized she hadn’t asked him what he was doing at Flaws Farm. He had sounded very much at home, and she bit worriedly at her bottom lip. She had forgotten how freely Blake was used to coming and going in her old home, and if she was forced to endure the constant sight of him how would it affect the calm control she had sheltered behind for so long?

It won’t affect it at all, she told herself angrily. Why should it? Blake had effectively killed whatever feelings she had had for him—and they had only been infatuation—a very deep and intense infatuation agreed, but infatuation nevertheless …

Five minutes later she was speaking to her father, unable to stop the weak tears rolling down her face. Normally they only rang one another at Christmas and birthdays, and it shocked her to hear the hesitancy in his voice.

‘Blake tells me you intend paying us a visit?’

‘If you’ve got room for me. I hear you’ve got a housekeeper?’ Sapphire responded drily.

‘Yes, Mary Henderson. You probably remember her from the old days. She used to nurse at the local hospital. She was widowed a couple of years ago, and her husband left a lot of debts, so she had to sell her house and look for a job. Blake recommended her to me. This is still your home Sapphire,’ he added in a different voice. ‘There’s always a room for you here.’

Without saying it he was making her aware of all the times she should have gone home and hadn’t, because she hadn’t been able to conquer her weakness; her fear of meeting Blake, and discovering that she wasn’t as strong as she had believed. What was she really frightened of though? Blake seducing her? Hardly likely—after all he hadn’t wanted her when they were married, so why should he want her now?

‘Expect me late tomorrow evening,’ Sapphire told him. ‘Alan’s lending me his car, because he doesn’t think my old VW is reliable enough.’ For some reason Sapphire found the silence that followed oddly disconcerting.

‘You’d better use the top road,’ her father said at last. ‘They’ve been doing some roadworks on the other one and there’ve been traffic jams all week just this side of Hawick.’

Mentally revising her plans, Sapphire said her goodbyes. She had planned to drive up the M6 to Carlisle and then take the A7 through Hawick and Jedburgh, rather than using the ‘top road’ which was shorter but which meant driving along the narrow winding road which crossed and re-crossed the Cheviots.

That night, too wide-awake to sleep, she acknowledged that hearing Blake’s voice had disturbed her—dangerously so. The sound of it brought back memories she had struggled to suppress; herself at fourteen watching with shy adulation while Blake worked. Fresh from university he had seemed like a god from Olympus to her and she had dogged his footsteps, hanging on to his every word. Was it then that he had decided to marry her? It was certainly then that he had started to put into practice the modern farming techniques he had learned partially at university and partially during his working holidays in New Zealand into force. Perhaps it was also then that he had first cast covetous eyes on Flaws Farm and mentally calculated the benefits to himself of owning its rich acres in addition to his own. She would never know, but certainly he had been kind and patient with her, carefully answering all her shy questions, tactfully ignoring her blushes and coltish clumsiness. She remembered practically falling off her pony one day straight into his arms, and how she had felt when they closed round her, the steady beat of his heart thumping into her thin chest. From that day on she had started to weave the fantasies about him that had taken her blissfully into their marriage.

At eighteen she had known very little of the world—had only travelled as far as Edinburgh and Newcastle and had certainly not got the sophistication to match Blake. He had left the valley when she was fifteen to join the army and had returned two years later the same and yet different; harder, even more sure of himself and possessed of a dangerous tension that sent frissons of awareness coursing over her skin whenever he looked at her.

The Christmas she was seventeen he had kissed her properly for the first time in the large living room of Sefton House—the large rambling building his great-grandfather had built when a fire had gutted the old farmhouse. There had been a crowd of people there attending a Boxing Day party and someone had produced a sprig of mistletoe. Even now she could vividly remember the mixture of anticipation and dread with which she had awaited Blake’s kiss. She had known he would kiss her. He had kissed all the other girls, but the kiss he gave her was different, or so she had told herself at the time. Her first ‘grown-up’ kiss; the first time she had experienced the potency of sexual desire. His mouth had been firm and warm, his lips teasing hers, his tongue probing them apart.