Folly's Child (38 page)

‘It's all right, I won't break,' Paula said, laughing because his happiness was infectious.

‘This calls for a drink!' He turned to her anxiously. ‘Is it all right for you have a drink?'

‘I don't suppose a glass of champagne will hurt me.'

‘I'm going to make sure you're completely spoiled,' he said when he had opened a bottle and filled two flutes. ‘Good food, plenty of rest … you'll stop working immediately, of course.'

‘I suppose so,' Paula said, sipping her champagne and feeling pleased for the first time since the doctor had confirmed her condition.

Her only real pleasure in going to the showroom these days was knowing the discomfort her presence caused Laddie; it would really be very nice to have a cast iron excuse not to have to go in again except to swan in occasionally in the wardrobe of beautiful maternity clothes she felt sure Hugo would design for her. It was a pity that mini skirts were in – they were not very flattering with a bulge. But Hugo would come up with something that was both fashionable and attractive, she was sure, and she would be the most glamorous mother-to-be in New York.

Perhaps being pregnant was not so bad after all.

By the time Harriet was born Paula had changed her mind yet again. She had been right first time – being pregnant was awful! As the months had passed she had viewed her increasingly ungainly body with distaste. Ugly – so ugly! Would it ever return to its former shape? And her poor skin, stretched like a child's balloon over that enormous bulge, would it ever be smooth and taut again? Twice a day she massaged almond oil into it, but still she worried, and the lovely nutty perfume of the almonds which she normally loved made her feel nauseous. In fact almost any kind of smell, pleasant or otherwise, did the same.

‘Cheer up, honey, a bad pregnancy means an easy confinement', Melanie Shriver, her greatest friend amongst the lunch set, comforted her, but Paula was soon to discover that that was just another old wives' tale.

The birth was long and difficult. When Harriet Bristow Varna finally came screaming into the world Paula was too exhausted to want to look at her, let alone hold her. She lay back on the delivery bed, hair damp and straggling about a waxy face, vaguely aware that a great deal of fussing was going on around her lower half which felt strangely wet, hot and sticky. She heard the word ‘haemorrhage' mentioned, but registered more annoyance than alarm.

‘Lie quite still now, Mrs Varna, don't try to move,' a nurse said in a worried voice and Paula merely thought: Silly cow! As if I would!

More fuss, more voices. ‘I'm going to give you an injection, Mrs Varna, to stop the bleeding.' The needle sinking deep into the vein. Anxious faces. The stickiness had spread; she could feel it around her shoulders and in her hair. But she really was much too tired to care.

Everything was muzzy now, the faces floating, the voices seeming to come from a long way off.

Never again, thought Paula as she slipped into the soft blanketing mists. Never, never again!

‘Honey, are you awake? There's someone to see you.'

Paula, lying back against the pillows, sighed inwardly. Since she had been allowed home from hospital a week ago it seemed there had been an endless stream of visitors and she was sick to death of them.

The ladies she met at charity lunches and fund raisers had come, mostly under the pretext of bringing a gift for Harriet, though Paula suspected half of them had come because they were curious to see the new house and the other half wanted to evaluate how well her looks had stood up to her ordeal. Then there had been a delegation from the showroom, headed by Maura Hemingway bearing a huge bouquet of flowers and a card signed by each and every employee – ‘ Hypocrites!' thought Paula bitterly.

But most of all she resented Hugo's mother and sisters. They had never liked her but now they took a proprietorial interest that was both irritating and cloyingly claustrophobic. They hung over the lace-bedecked crib, cooing at the baby, straightening the covers and discussing how this feature was exactly like Grandmother Docherty and that one the image of Aunt Sophia.

‘That's the Docherty nose for sure!' Hugo's mother said triumphantly and Paula had to bite back the urge to scream – It's not! It's
my
nose! I'm her mother, for goodness sake, surely you'll allow she can be just a little like me?

Besides hanging over the cot Martha insisted on sitting beside Paula's bed like a sentinel, as if being the baby's grandmother also gave her the right to watch over Paula, and she refused to be budged even by the nurse whom Hugo had employed to take care of ‘his girls' as he called them and who was seriously concerned about the strain on Paula of the constant stream of visitors.

‘New mothers need their rest,' she had said politely, but Martha had bridled.

‘You think I don't know that? I've been a mother myself four times. How many times have you been a mother, young lady?'

Ellie, the nurse, had kept her patience with difficulty.

‘You must know then how tiring visitors can be. I don't want Mrs Varna's temperature to go soaring up again. She has been very poorly.'

Martha had sniffed loudly. A lot of fuss about nothing, that sniff seemed to say.

‘We're not visitors, we are family,' she said aloud.

‘I'm sorry. The doctor's orders are that Mrs Varna must be kept quiet otherwise he will take her back to hospital again. I'm afraid I must insist you leave now.'

So eventually she had enforced her authority and Martha, looking indignant, had left. Paula had smiled to herself. It was good to have someone else to fight her battles, especially when she felt so dreadfully weak and tired.

This afternoon, however, Ellie was having a few hours off and there was no one to object when Hugo looked in to announce that Paula had a visitor.

‘Oh Hugo, I'm not feeling too good. Can't you send them away?' she begged.

‘It's Greg, honey,' Hugo said gently.

Greg. Her heart leapt and suddenly she was not tired any more.

Since that July evening in the garden she had not seen him. Business had taken him to Europe direct from Texas – and Paula had been glad, for by then she had been pregnant and she had not wanted Greg to see her looking anything less than her best. As the months had passed she had all but forgotten the effect he had had on her. Now, as Hugo told her he was here to see her, it all came flooding back and with it something close to panic.

She couldn't see him looking like this – make-up minimal, hair mussed up by the pillows! But oh how she wanted to just the same! A pulse was beating in her throat and she felt her hands trembling.

‘Paula. Congratulations. How are you?'

He was in the doorway, every bit as handsome as she remembered him, carrying a huge bouquet of flowers and a basket of fruit.

‘Oh I'm quite well.' Her voice was slightly breathless; she hoped he would not notice.

‘You certainly look it! Well, Hugo, you old son of a bitch, I can't leave you alone for five minutes can I? First time you're out of my sight you get yourself married, the second you become a father.'

‘Hardly in five minutes,' Hugo remarked drily. ‘You have been gone more than six months.'

‘Yes, I suppose I have. Anyway, I'm quite sure that left alone with Paula I would be every bit as bad as you.' His eyes met hers, teasing, and she felt her cheeks growing hot. ‘For you, Paula, the most beautiful mother in New York,' he said, holding out the flowers for her to take.

‘Thank you, they're beautiful …' She thought, oh God how stupid I am! I've never been like this with a man before – any man! ‘ Let me take them, shall I?' Hugo suggested. ‘I'll get Doris to put them in water. And what about something to drink? We should open a bottle of champagne to wet the baby's head, don't you think?'

‘What a good idea,' Greg said. ‘Still the same old Hugo, drinking champagne at the least excuse.'

‘Our first child is hardly a flimsy excuse,' Paula said lightly as Hugo left the room. ‘Wouldn't you like to have a look at her? She's asleep, but …' She reached over to draw aside the lace drapery around the crib but Greg made no attempt to move and when she glanced up questioning she met his eyes, still on her – and still very disconcerting.

‘I'd much rather look at her mother,' he said almost insolently and the words make something tight and sharp spiral within her.

‘Mr Martin …'

‘Greg,' he corrected. ‘Oh yes, mothers are much more interesting.'

His eyes were moving over her lazily, mentally undressing her, removing the nightgown of virginal white silk and gazing at her breasts, fuller and more voluptuous now than they had ever been. She had had injections to stop the milk coming in but they did not seem to have been entirely successful – she still felt uncomfortably full and occasionally a spot of liquid squeezed from her nipples and moistened the white silk. Now, beneath his gaze, she felt herself colouring once more, but this time the blush seemed to spread all over her body.

‘Get well soon, Paula,' he said in the same tone, light and teasing but with hidden meaning. ‘It will be good to see you back on the social circuit. We've never really had a chance to get to know each other, you and I, have we? I hope it won't be long before that can be remedied.'

She couldn't reply, her breath had constricted in her throat. How dare he talk like this, with Hugo practically in the next room? And yet what had he said? Nothing out of place, really. No, it was the way he looked at her as he said it that gave his words a deeper meaning.

‘Here we are then!' Hugo appeared, bearing a bottle of Moët et Chandon in a silver bucket. ‘I've been keeping the stuff permanently on ice! So – what do you think of my little Tumbleweed, Greg? Isn't she the most beautiful baby you ever saw?'

‘I haven't actually seen her yet,' Greg admitted.

Paula drew the lace drapery aside again hoping she was managing to conceal her excitement and confusion and this time Greg peeked inside.

There was no doubt Harriet was a beautiful baby. Paula did not think she could have borne it if she had been ugly – red, wrinkled and bald. But she was not. She had a smooth cherubic face with wide blue eyes and a button nose and her well-shaped head was covered with corn coloured strands of silk.

‘Thank God she doesn't look like you, pal,' Greg said to Hugo. ‘She's just like her mother – a little beauty.'

‘I'm glad you like her,' Hugo said seriously, ‘because I have been thinking – ‘I'd like you to be her godfather.' He heard Paula's quick indrawn breath and glanced at her, ‘ I know we haven't discussed it, honey, but I figured we wouldn't have had much to offer this little tumbleweed if it weren't for Greg and there's no one I'd rather trust my daughter to if anything happened to me.'

‘Christ, Hugo, I'm honoured, but I certainly wouldn't trust me!' Greg ran a hand through his thick dark hair. ‘Hey, you think about it, pal. Talk it over with Paula.'

Hugo has embarrassed him! Paula thought, enjoying the experience of seeing Greg fazed in spite of her annoyance that Hugo should ask him to be Harriet's godfather without consulting her.

‘Well, you think too,' Hugo said, pouring the champagne. ‘Here's to my daughter! To Harriet!'

‘To Harriet.' Greg raised his glass, then turned. ‘And also to Paula.'

His eyes met hers. The challenge in them was unmistakeable. Her heart began to pound again, her stomach fell away. With a lurch of lust she found herself wondering what it would be like to be held against that hard muscular body, have those sensuous lips taking hers and those lean brown hands on her swollen breasts. Oh how she wanted him! Her whole body ached for him. Yet at the same time she felt ashamed, diminished by the emotions over which she seemed to have no control.

‘Yes, and to Paula, my beautiful wife,' Hugo said proudly, totally unaware of her wayward thoughts.

‘You know, honey, I thought I had lost you,' Hugo said. He was lying beside Paula, holding her tenderly.

It was the first time he had put into words the terror that had filled him when he had seen her after Harriet's birth, lying pale and exhausted with the dried blood from her haemorrhage caked in her dull gold hair and beneath her nails. The sight of her had affected him too deeply, submerging even his pride in his child in the nightmarish realisation that she could so easily have died – would have done, probably, just a few short decades ago before the means to cause blood to clot had been discovered. Her life could have literally drained away from her then and she would have been just another pathetic statistic – a woman who had died in childbirth.

The thought was such a dreadful one he had decided there and then – he couldn't tempt fate again, could not put her through another such ordeal for his own gratification. If anything happened to Paula he would never forgive himself. And without her his own life might as well be at an end.

‘I don't think we should have any more children,' he said now.

Paula was aware of a huge spasm of relief. But the actress in her made her ask solicitously: ‘ Don't you want any more?'

‘Not particularly,' Hugo answered truthfully. ‘My little Tumblewood is everything a father could wish for. It's you I'm concerned about now, honey. You mean everything to me, you know that.'

‘Yes,' Paula murmured, sliding her hands up his silk pyjama-covered back, secure in the knowledge that he would make no attempt to make love to her for some weeks yet. ‘You are very good to me, Hugo, much better than I deserve.'

‘Nonsense. You've made me the happiest man alive,' Hugo said into her hair. ‘I never thought it was possible to love as much as I love you. And if I should lose you I couldn't bear it.'

Paula lay very still.

Hugo had meant if she should die. But there are more ways of losing a woman than to death. In the soft dark Paula's arms were around her husband but she was thinking of Greg Martin.