AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Tears blinded her as she got into her car and started the engine.
It was a still, hazily hot day, the temperature just on the right side of mugginess even though it was now September, the stillness of the air enhancing the silence of the garden.
In the borders, daisylike asters looked to the tumble of clambering roses for support; poppies, run to seed, grew everywhere, pushing their way up through huge clumps of catmint and geraniums.
Eleanor took her time; after all there was no reason to hurry. Not now she had the whole afternoon ahead of her.
In the iris dell, the flowers were over, all that remained the dying, untidy stalks and browned flower heads.
Overhead, the late summer leaves provided a cool canopy, the path shadowed and sheltered.
She didn’t allow herself to cry until she reached the pool. Now for the first time she allowed herself to acknowledge what she had really known for some time. Even if Marcus had wanted the house, the problems they would have faced in turning it into the home of her dreams would have been virtually insurmountable. Her accountant had tried to tell her this, and so had the architect, but she had been too afraid to let go of her dream, too afraid of facing up to what letting go of it actually meant, too afraid of relinquishing its displacement value, using it as a shield to protect her from reality and her very real problems.
‘Marcus loves you,’ Jade had said, adding drily, ‘Come on, Nell, be realistic. How many men aren’t tempted to stray occasionally, and how many women have to learn to live with that fact, to accept and ignore it… ?’
Eleanor had shaken her head. ‘I know what you’re trying to say, Jade, but I can’t. It’s not so much the physical act of infidelity, it’s the slow destructiveness of never knowing if it’s me he really wants, or if he simply stays with me because it’s so much easier than going through another divorce. I can’t live like that, no matter how much I love him. I need his respect as well as his love,’ she had told her friend simply, ‘and I need my own self-respect as well. Loving him on its own isn’t enough…’
* * *
She was standing staring out across the pool when Marcus found her. He didn’t walk right up to her, stopping several yards away instead and saying her name quietly.
He watched as her face lost its colour and her body tensed warily.
‘Marcus! You’re back… I…’
‘I got an earli
er flight,’ he told her brusquely.
She was frowning now, withdrawing from him physically as well as emotionally, as she stepped back into the shadows.
‘How did you know I would be all the way down here? I didn’t tell anyone I was coming…’
‘When you weren’t at home I knew where I would find you.’
‘Yes, I suppose I am predictable.’
‘I hope so,’ Marcus agreed.
There was no emotion either in his voice or on his face, but something, some sixth sense alerted her to his tension.
‘We need to talk, Nell,’ he told her quietly. ‘But first… just one question. Do you still love me?’
Eleanor looked at him for a long time. Why was he asking? Out of guilt, perhaps. What was he hoping she would say? What was his reason for asking? She hesitated, anxious and fearful, before acknowledging that there was only one answer she could give; that honesty, no matter how painful, was the only course open to her.
She took a deep breath and then told him shakily, ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but it certainly wasn’t that he would cover the space between them so quickly, nor that he would take her in his arms, holding her as though she were the most precious, fragile thing he had ever held, slowly running his hands over her, tracing the shape of her face with his fingertips, his own face unfamiliarly flushed, his fingertips trembling slightly as he touched her with an absorbed, almost blind concentration on what he was doing.
As she watched him, registering his intensity, Eleanor had the feeling that somehow he was showing himself to her, revealing a part of himself she had not previously known even existed, and yet instead of feeling hurt or angered by this knowledge she felt a quick springing up of joy and recognition, an awareness that went far beyond the physical and emotional. It was as though he was somehow showing to her the most private and spiritual part of himself, the pure undiluted essence of all that he was.
Instinctively she responded to it, moving closer to him, touching him, silently acknowledging her inner awareness of all that he was showing to her.
When they kissed, it was not with passion, but with a slow, gradual acknowledgement of one another, a true binding together of their differentness into one perfect whole.
‘I love you too,’ Marcus whispered shakily. ‘And if this house really is what you want…’
Eleanor shook her head. ‘It isn’t the house,’ she told him. ‘What I really wanted was what it represented to me. You were right, anyway, buying it isn’t a practical proposition. Why didn’t you say something, though, Marcus? Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t want it?’
