Unknown (14 page)

“I’ll have to go !”

To her surprise, her stepmother flashed her a radiant smile and rose too. “We’ll take you to the station and come back, my dear. You don’t mind, do you, Alec?”

“Not at all,” he said politely.

He went to get the car while Madge and Sarah stood on the edge of the pavement and waited. He was a long time gone though and Sarah was really worried by the time the car drew in beside them.

“You sit in the front, darling,” Madge suggested. “It will be nicer for Alec !”

Sarah was in such a hurry to get out of the car that she opened the door before it had stopped and almost fell as she jumped out, already running for the train. She was vaguely aware of Alec following her, carrying her bag.

“Sarah, come back!” he yelled to her.

But Sarah was running hard now. She flung herself against the barrier just as it began to close against her.

“You can’t go on the platform now!” the ticket collector told her.

“I must!” she cried out. “I
must
!” She flung herself against the iron gates again, but the gates were shut solidly against her. It was the last straw. Sarah put her hands on the iron bars and burst into tears.

“You’ve missed it,” Alec said behind her.

“What am I going to do?” Sarah sobbed.

He turned her to face him, catching her tears with his forefinger. “Is it such a tragedy? Madge says your father is quite all right. You can catch the first train down in the morning. Your father will be asleep by now anyway. He’ll hardly know the difference.”

“I suppose not,” she said pathetically. “But oh, Alec, I wish I’d caught that train! I should never have agreed to have supper after the theatre!”

“You didn’t,” Alec reminded her. “Come on now, Sarah. Do you know the time of the first train in the morning?”

She nodded. Once she had started to cry it was very difficult to stop. The tears flowed down her face, making her self-conscious in the lights of the station, and so she turned her face into Alec’s jacket and allowed him to lead her away, out of the station and back to his car.

The hired car that took her to the station in the morning was early. Sarah got into the back seat, hugging her bag to her, as they travelled through the almost empty London streets. .

“Going home with the milk?” the driver teased her.

“I missed the last train last night.”

“Bad luck. Actually you’re more likely to find the newspapers on the train than the milk. Still, so long as it gets you there, eh, miss?”

“Yes,” said Sarah.

The train stopped at every halt on the way down. Sarah found herself willing it to go faster, but it trundled along in its own time, emitting a series of thuds and thumps every time it stopped. At times she thought it would be quicker to walk.

Canterbury Station was deserted. Sarah rang up a taxi and asked him to take her to Chaddoxboume.

“We’re short-staffed early in the morning, madam,” she was told. “It will be a few minutes. Will you wait?”

Reflecting that she had little choice in the matter, Sarah said she would. She went outside to wait for the taxi, standing in the mild sunlight and listening to the morning chorus from the birds. She didn’t have long to wait and she climbed into the car with a sigh of relief. She had hardly slept at all during the night and her eyes felt sandy from lack of sleep.

She sat forward when the taxi turned off the main road for Chaddoxboume. The first sight of the village never failed to delight her and, on this particular morning, she thought it had never looked prettier. The church was golden from the early morning sunlight, and the mill stood out in silhouette, with the freckled water going by. They drew up in front of the oast-house without stopping for the gates stood wide open. Sarah jumped out of the taxi and paid the driver too quickly, spilling a few coins on the drive. For some reason this reminded her of Robert and a great longing to see him welled up within her.

The taxi drove off and, at last, Sarah went inside the oast-house, willing herself to be sensible and not to give way completely in the face of her relief at being home. She shut the front door behind her and wandered slowly into the sitting room to draw back the curtains and let the sun into the room. As she entered, she saw someone sitting there and leaped to the conclusion that it was her father.

“Daddy?”

But it was not her father. It was Robert. He stood up slowly, his face as bleak as granite.

“Where have you been?” he asked her.

“WHERE have you been?”

Sarah started towards him, but something stopped her. It was only then that she realised that he was bitterly angry.

“What’s happened?” she whispered.

“You may well ask! I hope you enjoyed your night out?”

“You know I didn’t! It was awful. I missed the last train, but it wasn’t my fault—truly it wasn’t! Robert, you’ve got to believe me !”

The look in his eyes was contemptuous. “Nicely played!” he applauded.

She faced him bravely, only just preventing herself from bursting into tears. It had been bad enough having to spend the night in London, without having him look at her like that! What did he think she had been doing, but waiting for the first train home that morning? And why, oh, why did have to condemn her for that? “What’s the matter, Robert?”

“Need you ask? Need you really ask?”

“I can’t know unless you tell me,” she pointed out.

His lips curled. “You do it very well, Sarah Blaney, but you can’t hope to take me in a second time. I told you it was all or nothing as far as I’m concerned. The choice was yours. You’ve chosen nothing. That’s all there is to it. Not such a big tragedy, is it?”

“But what am I supposed to have done?"

He looked really angry at that and she was afraid for the first time. A cold hand of fear clutched at her as she saw her happiness slipping through her fingers for no reason that she could see.

“Where were you last night?” he demanded again.

“Doesn’t that tell you in itself? You were unlucky, Sarah. You had every right to expect that I would never know, but that one chance in a hundred saw that I did—”

“Know what?”

“Oh, what’s the good of going on about it? I have no inclination to hold an inquest on what might have been!”

Sarah clenched her fists. “I think you owe it to me to tell me what I’m supposed to have done,” she insisted doggedly. Her eyes reflected her agony as she stared at him out of a pale and weary face. “I knew you were a hard man,” she went on, “but I never thought you’d be unjust.”

“
Unjust
? If you only knew! I spent the greater part of the night trying to think of some excuse for you, but there isn’t one! You were seen, Sarah. It’s as simple as that!”

“Seen doing what?”

“Oh, very well, if you must have it, you’d better sit down. Did you see your stepmother last night?”

Sarah nodded. “I saw her show. She insisted on having supper afterwards. I didn’t want to, but she made it impossible for me to go on refusing. That’s how I missed the train.”

He whipped round and, for a moment, she thought he was going to strike her.

“Don’t lie to me, Sarah! Let’s end it with dignity!”

“But I don’t want to end it!”

“You should have thought of that last night!”

Sarah sank down on the very edge of the sofa, feeling that her legs were unable to support her any longer. “I didn’t want to stay in London! I was counting the hours until I could get back here—to you!”

“In Alec Farne’s company?”

“He was there, yes. My stepmother asked him to supper too—”

“For heaven’s sake, Sarah! I saw Madge yesterday too, don’t forget! She was distraught when she left here. In fact she wouldn’t have gone at all if I hadn’t said I’d stay here with your father. We both expected you to be home within an hour or so of her going— And then you tell me that she asked you out
to supper
!”

Sarah’s face was whiter than ever. “How is Dad?”

“He’s still alive,” he said brutally. He saw her wince into herself and his expression softened a little. “He’s better than he was. I had the doctor in to look at him and he gave him a shot to make his breathing easier. But his heart is bad, Sarah. Very bad. He can’t go on like this, but you know that, don’t you?”

“You mean he’s going to die,” she said tonelessly.

He nodded slowly. “It has to happen sooner or later. Yesterday was a terrible day for us all. Your stepmother was in a dreadful state, for she’d never seen him having an attack like that before. I thought she was going to collapse when she realised how ill he was. She’s a very brave woman! ”

“Isn’t she?” Sarah said with gentle mockery.

The sympathy that she had glimpsed in his face died and his expression was as hard as ever. “You weren’t here,” he said unanswerably. “You can’t know what she went through.”

“I saw her in London,” Sarah reminded him. “I went round to speak to her in the interval and she said that Dad was quite all right. ‘In the pink’ was the expression she used.” She was silent for a long moment, then she added inconsequentially, “She ordered champagne for supper.”

“I don’t believe you!”

“Alec took me to the station, but they closed the barrier just as I got there and they wouldn’t let me through.”

“Yes, I know. You must have been very disappointed. Disappointed enough to allow Alec to console you by embracing you in public and leading you off arm in arm to his car
—and then where
?” He shrugged. “Wherever it was, it was enough for you both to be overcome with joy!”

“Who told you that?” Sarah demanded. “Some troublemaker tells you something like that and you prefer to believe them rather than me? Perhaps, after all, it is as well if we think again! ”

“I’m sure Alec will think so !”

Sarah lifted her head proudly. “Unworthy!” she declared.

“Perhaps. I am not as adept at hiding my feelings as you are. Nor was it some troublemaker, as you put it. It was Neil who saw you.”

“Then why on earth didn’t he say anything to me?”

Robert laughed harshly. “You were otherwise engaged,” he reminded her.

“I see,” she said. “And so I’m already condemned and cast off without your even listening to what I have to say.”

“Cast off?” he mocked her. “Your taste for the dramatic is unfailing. I can’t imagine why I didn’t see it before!”

“And your lack of trust is despicable!” she flared back at him.

“An ill-matched pair!” he agreed dryly.

“Oh, you’re impossible! I don’t even like Alec!” Her voice broke and she swallowed hard. “But even if I did, I couldn’t have left Dad—”

“That sticks in my gullet too. I’ve been saying to myself over and over again that whatever you really felt about me, I’d have sworn on my own life that you were sincerely concerned about Daniel. That was truly unforgivable!”

“Yes, it was. But not on my part, whatever you believe. And just in case you’re interested, I spent the night at my stepmother’s house. You can ask her if you don’t believe me!”

“I’m not interested.”

The finality of those three icy words struck her like a blow. “Then there’s nothing more to say, is there?”

“No.”

But, even though she knew it would do no good, she felt obliged to make one more try to tell him the truth.

“Robert, I can explain—”

He ran his hand through his hair, looking very tired and defeated in a way that hurt her even though she knew he was doing it to himself, that she hadn’t betrayed him.

“I can’t stand any more lies,” he said at last. “Lies breed very easily, Sarah. Tell one, and before you know where you are you’re enmeshed in them. The best thing is not to tell them. I saw your stepmother yesterday and I know she was beside herself with grief and worry. The last thing she would have done would have been to have kept you in London quite unnecessarily to see a show she didn’t care a button about beside your father. But even then I might have given you the benefit of the doubt, because I thought you cared for him too, but Neil effectively put paid to that. I told you that I wouldn’t play second fiddle, to keep you entertained in the country until you could get back to London, and I meant it. You’d better go up to your father and see what you can do for him now you
are
here. Me, I’m going home to breakfast before I start work in Canterbury.”

Sarah rose to her feet, ashamed that her knees were still trembling. With as much dignity as she could summon up, she escorted him to the door, her head held high.

“Thank you for looking after my father,” she said formally. “And, Robert, whatever you may think, I don’t tell lies. Perhaps one day you’ll find that out.” She chewed on her lip, shocked by the cold anger that gripped her. “I’m sorry it had to end this way.”

She closed the door quickly before her cool deserted her. He had gone and there was nothing left. It was a curious sensation to be dead inside and yet to have to go on living. Perhaps, later on, she would cry her eyes out and come alive again. But she doubted it. She doubted if she would ever feel anything ever again.

Facing her father was another hurdle she had to take before she could go to bed. When she went into his room he was still asleep, his heavy breathing creaking noisily. His ashen face looked unbelievably tired and lined against the pillow. Sarah stood beside the bed and looked down at him for a long moment, her thoughts bitter. That her stepmother was capable of leaving her husband at such a time, she felt that she had always known, though she had never admitted to the knowledge. But why? Why should she have done it?

She became aware of her father’s eyes on her and smiled at him in answer to his own painful attempt. “Madge was here, wasn’t she?” he said.

Sarah nodded. “Yes, she was here.”

His face twisted into a grimace that hurt her to the quick. “She didn’t stay?”

“It was Monday, Dad. She had to get back to London. The show has to go on!”

He shut his eyes. “My show is nearly done. I’m glad of it. You’ve been a great comfort to me, Sarah, but there are times when a man has need of his wife.”