The Hidden Years (63 page)

She noticed as she drove that the blackberries were
ripening fast, black and luscious, and regretted that the fact that she
was wearing her one and only good dress meant that she dared not stop
to pick some. With some of the early apples they would make a lovely
apple and blackberry crumble for Edward's supper.

She was halfway down the drive and in sight of the house
when she saw the unfamiliar car parked outside. A new Ford, with
bright, shiny paintwork that made her old Morris look even more tired
and shabby than it already was.

She frowned as she saw it, wondering to whom it belonged.
They so rarely had unheralded visitors that the sight of the car caused
a faint
frisson
of apprehension to run through
her.

Quite without knowing why she entered the house through
the front door instead of the kitchen, knowing that their visitor could
only be with Edward.

As she approached the open library door she could hear
male voices, Edward's tired and slightly strained, the other vigorously
male and yet quiet in tone, with an accent she initially found hard to
place.

As she walked into the library she saw that Edward was
looking tired, his thin frame and grey hair in stark contrast to the
powerful whipcord build of the man with him.

Vivid green eyes studied her as she walked towards them,
not as a man studies a woman, she recognised, but in a distant, remote
way, an indifferent way almost.

'Darling, this is Lewis McLaren,' Edward told her. 'He's
over here from Australia and he thought he'd call on us and see how his
ram is doing.'

Lewis McLaren… Vic's Australian
boss… owner of Woolonga, who had first bred the wonderful
ram which was providing her with her valuable fleeces of top quality
wool.

'Mr McLaren.' She looked uncertainly at him, her eyes
guarded, unfriendly almost. Once that would have made him curious about
her. Once… His intellect registered the fact that she was an
extremely beautiful woman, his brain acknowledging his surprise at this
fact.

He had heard about her, of course, from Vic, and from
Beth; had registered Beth's dislike and resentment of her, and Vic's
silence. He had heard too about Edward Danvers, and had been prepared
to find him an invalid. An invalid—but he was still a man
with a wife and a son.

His mouth twisted bitterly, and Liz, noting it, stiffened,
wondering what it was she had done to cause the grimness in his eyes.
He had extended his hand towards her, more out of politeness than
anything else, she was sure. She touched it briefly, reluctantly
almost, tensing as she felt its calloused hardness. A shock of
sensation seemed to run through her, a sharp poignant awareness of his
maleness, his healthiness in contrast to Edward's infirmity, but
immediately she pushed the comparison away from her.

She was tired and on edge, that was all. Tired of having
to tread so soft-footedly around Edward's increasing moods of
depression and violence.

'You got David safely back, then,' Edward was asking her,
and without waiting for a reply he turned to their visitor and told him
proudly, 'David is our son. A fine boy…'

His love for David, his pride in him touched her heart as
always, reminding her of how much she had to thank him for.

'Do you have a family, Mr McLaren?' Edward enquired.

'No… No, I don't.'

The words were bitter, savage, accompanied by a grim
flexing of his mouth, a betraying pulse of the muscle in his jaw.

Liz frowned. She was sure she could remember Beth and Vic
mentioning in one of their recent letters that the owner of Woolonga
was married and that his wife was expecting a child, but it was obvious
from his expression that his private life just wasn't something that
Lewis McLaren wanted to discuss with them.

Tactfully she changed the subject, taking great care to
keep a formal distance between herself and their visitor.

It wasn't very difficult. He was polite to her, but she
had the feeling that he was not really seeing her as a woman at all.

She was relieved about that. She was finding it
increasingly difficult to cope with Edward's jealousy.

Only the previous week he had lost his temper with her,
accusing her of growing tired of him, of their marriage. Increasingly
these days, whenever these black moods overtook him, he would rage
furiously against his fate until he was too exhausted to continue, and
then he would break down in tears and weep as helplessly as a child,
clinging to her, begging her never to leave him.

These scenes were slowly taking their toll of her, and
heaven alone knew what they must be doing to Edward himself.

Sage put down the diary, staring blankly into space. Lewis
McLaren! But he was Scott's father. It had never ever occurred to her
that her mother might actually know him. But then, why on earth should
it? They lived thousands of miles apart. She had known, of course, that
her mother had obtained her first ram from Australia, but even in her
earlier reading of the diary she had never connected Woolonga with
Scott, never realised it was Scott's home. He had always referred to it
simply as 'the homestead'.

And yet her mother had never said a word to her about
knowing him, not even when she had taken Scott home and introduced him
to her. The shock of it was making her heart beat faster, reminding her
of old pains, old betrayals.

It was like turning a familiar corner and, instead of
seeing a well-known and recognised view, discovering that everything
had changed, had become distorted and in some way alien.

'Sage, Sage! Oh, thank goodness you're here. Can you
come…? Ma's just come back and she's in the most terrible
state…'

Sage frowned, focusing reluctantly on Camilla as her niece
rushed up to her, her face flushed, her eyes bright with tears of fear
and shock.

What was Camilla saying? Something about her
mother—about Faye. Automatically Sage got up.

'She came in and rushed straight upstairs. She was crying,
really crying, and she never cries, not like that.' Panic was
sharpening Camilla's voice.

'Sage, you've got to do something…'

Do something… What could she do? Had her mother
been here, she would have known what to do, she would have…
But she wasn't here, Sage recognised dully. And she was. She
was…

She stroked Camilla's hair as she stood up, smoothing the
tangled curls, surprised by the odd shaft of emotion she felt as she
stroked its youthful softness; a nostalgic sensation that was half pain
and half wry self-knowledge—for a briefly betraying moment
she had recognised that if Daniel had made love to her all those years
ago she too might now have a child… his child.

All her adult life she had sworn that children were not
for her; that she had neither the inclination nor the need to fulfil
woman's most basic and to her most unfulfilling role; and yet here she
was experiencing physical regret that she had not had a child by a man
who had never fully been her lover. Simple biology…or
something more?

'Come on,' Camilla urged her. 'Please hurry…
I'm so afraid… I've never seen her like this before.
Everything's changed,' Camilla told her passionately, angrily almost as
though unable to accept that fate had dared to alter a single aspect of
her life. 'Since Gran's accident nothing's been the same…
Nothing feels right any more…'

For all her burgeoning maturity, she was still so much the
cherished, cosseted, protected child, Sage reflected as she followed
her out of the room.

Faye in tears… Faye behaving in a way that was
more evocative of her own emotional bravura in those early days of
rebellion and resentment against her mother than the kind of thing one
expected from calm, controlled Faye, and as she hurried upstairs some
of Camilla's apprehension communicated itself to her.

Faye's bedroom door was closed and she knocked on it,
saying quietly to Camilla, 'I think it might be a good idea if you went
downstairs and asked Jenny if she could make us all some
tea…'

'You mean you think it would be a good idea if I
disappeared for a while?' Camilla contradicted her shrewdly.

'Perhaps… If your mother is as upset as you
say…'

'You mean she might not want me to know what's upset her?'

Sage nodded and waited until her niece had gone to push
open Faye's door.

Her sister-in-law was sitting on her bed, her head in her
hands, her whole body heaving with the violence of her silent racking
tears.

Instinctively Sage dropped to her knees in front of her,
placing her hands on her shoulders, shaking her gently as she asked,
'Faye… My dear, what is it? What's wrong?'

Faye raised her head and stared at her, her eyes so wild,
so feral that for one heart-stopping moment Sage almost feared that she
had actually gone beyond any form of reason, but then she focused on
her, the wildness abating a little.

'What's wrong?' Her voice was sharp, bordering on
hysteria—she was plainly fighting for self-control. 'Oh,
nothing much… nothing at all… I've just spent the
afternoon watching my mother die, that's all… Nothing
really… Nothing's wrong—how could there be? After
all, it's what I've been waiting for for the last twenty-five years or
more… I should be laughing, not crying, shouldn't I? She's
dead…and at last I'm free… Oh, God,
Sage… I don't know why I'm behaving like this. I don't
recognise myself any more… Perhaps I'm more like her than I
ever thought… Perhaps I'm going mad too… Oh,
God…'

'Faye, stop it. And listen to me… You've had a
bad shock, but it might help if you tell me about it…'

'Tell you about it?' Her mouth twisted. 'If you only knew
how often I've wanted to do that—to tell the world about it,
to cry out to it everything that I feel, to tell people that it wasn't
my fault, that I wasn't to blame, that I didn't know…'

She was crying again, dry, racking sobs that made Sage's
own chest feel sore. 'It's all right, Faye… It's all right.
It's over now…'

Unwittingly she had found the right words, because Faye
muttered rawly, 'Yes… it's all over now… Thank
God. I'm all right really—this is just a reaction, shock, I
suppose… I've been waiting for her to die for so long, and
yet somehow I never really believed that she would, or that I'd feel
such… such pain…'

Her eyes were focusing not on Sage, but into the distance,
as though she could see events unfolding beyond the confines of the
room.

'You think you know what it's like to hate your mother,
don't you?' she asked Sage bitterly. 'But you don't, you
don't… You think your mother destroyed your life, but that
was nothing…
Nothing
…'

'Do you know what my mother did to me?
Do
you?' she demanded savagely, her fingers locking round Sage's wrist,
her nails pressing painfully into her skin. 'Do you know what my mother
did to me? She let my stepfather rape me… She let him abuse
me and destroy me and she stood by and did nothing…'

Sage couldn't speak, couldn't think beyond thanking God
that she had had the foresight to send Camilla downstairs.

'You're shocked, disgusted… You're wondering if
I'm lying… exaggerating… You're probably even
wondering if I encouraged him, wanted him—'

'No,' Sage assured her. 'No, Faye, I believe
you…'

And she did… Automatically, instinctively she
felt as though a key had suddenly turned in a locked door, exposing to
her horrified gaze a view so tortured, so filled with pain and misery
that, like Pandora, she wished she had never turned the key. But it was
too late for that now… Faye obviously needed the catharsis
of talking, of describing all that she had suffered, and since she was
the only person here who could listen, listen she must.

In a voice more like her mother's than she herself knew
she suggested softly, 'Why don't you tell me all about it, Faye? Why
don't you start at the beginning, and tell me everything?'

Faye
took a deep breath and then another. Ever since she had received that
phone call early this morning to tell her that her mother was seriously
ill and not expected to live she had been trying to fight against her
emotions. Not the normal emotions of a child, even an adult child,
learning that she was about to lose her only parent, but emotions that
made Faye shrink from herself, because they were ugly: anger, fear,
relief, resentment that she was actually experiencing all
this… that through her mother's lack of care for her she had
been forced to suffer the guilt of not being able to love her. How
often during the night had she woken, shivering and sweating, fighting
to break free of the nightmare that engulfed her…the
nightmare that had always taken the same course? The slow opening of
her bedroom door, the shadowy unseen and yet so terrifyingly familiar
figure coming closer and closer to her bed… smiling at her,
the hated dreadful smile of a torturer, of someone who enjoyed
inflicting pain and degradation.

She had tried to scream, to escape… but every
time she reached the door she found it barred. Not by him, but by
her… her mother.

How often had she woken David with that nightmare, with
her fear, finding comfort in the warm, tender hold of his arms? David,
who in some ways had been both the mother and the father she had never
known… David, who had been her protector, who had surrounded
her with the deep but sexless love she had craved so much from her
mother and yet never received.

The lack of passion in their marriage had been their
secret… hers and David's. Something she had not even shared
with Liz. He had loved her, he had told her that and she had known it
was true. But he did not have the desire that motivated other men, he
had said it was as though that motivating force had somehow been
excluded from his make-up.

Neither of them had felt its loss. She had been happy with
him and he with her. She had given him a child and would have given him
more had they had the time fate had not allowed them.