For The Sake Of His Child

CHAPTER EIGHT

AT BREAKFAST next morning Carson said, without looking at her, ‘I’ll be home early tonight to let you go out.’

‘Go out? I’m not going anywhere,’ Gina said, puzzled.

‘Aren’t you meeting Dan to buy the engagement ring?’

‘Enga-?’ She rose from the table, full of wrath. ‘What has Dan been saying to you?’

‘Last night he said-well, he implied-’ The glint in her eyes was thrilling, if a little unnerving, and her hair glowed redder than ever. ‘He implied he’d asked you to marry him and-’

‘Yes, he asked me, but I didn’t answer because I couldn’t get his attention away from the race. You mean he just took it for granted, and he told you-?’ She took a long breath. ‘If Dan was here this minute I’d-well, it’s lucky for him that he isn’t.’

‘You’re not going to marry him?’

‘Not in a million years,’ she said emphatically. ‘I’d have told you-how could you think? Oh-h-h I could-’

A lock of fiery hair fell over her brow. She pushed it back. Carson watched her with delight. The sun had come out again.

As he went to the front door Joey joined him, anxiously signing. Are you and Gina cross?

‘No,’ Carson told him. ‘In fact, things couldn’t be better.’

When her temper had calmed, Gina called Dan.

‘I blame myself,’ she said. ‘I should have told you last night that I couldn’t marry you, but there was so much going on.’

‘But we had it all settled.’

‘Dan, we didn’t settle anything. We barely mentioned marriage between races. That’s no way to decide something so important.’

‘Gina, we’ve known for ages that we were going to get married. We haven’t made a fuss about it, but it’s been taken for granted.’

‘Maybe that’s why we shouldn’t. We’ve been good friends. Let’s keep it that way.’

He argued for a while, but she knew there was no going back. When Dan hung up he sounded bewildered rather than heartbroken. He would find someone else, she thought, someone who would appreciate the qualities he had and not worry about the ones he hadn’t. Once, that girl might have been herself, but now it was as though she’d been overtaken by a kind of divine discontent.

Carson seemed to be there with her, touching her face with gentle fingers, regarding her mouth with pleasure, kissing it so tenderly and lovingly that her heart almost stopped from the beauty of it. And then drawing back. Why? Because he thought she was engaged to Dan? Yes, she thought excitedly, because of that.

Only that? Was she fooling herself with what she longed to believe?

Dan had said, ‘You’d never even think of him in that way.’ But the thought had been lurking there since the first day, when Carson had sat in Bob’s Café and made the surroundings look drab against his vivid life. He’d disturbed her, but she’d thought that was because of the car incident. The truth was that he disturbed her because he disturbed her. There was no other reason.

She became aware that Joey was trying to get her attention, puzzled, because it was the first time she’d ever been oblivious to his needs.

Why are you smiling like that?

She hadn’t known she was smiling. ‘Because I’m happy.’

Why?

‘It would take too long to tell you. Let’s go out for a drive.’

In the peanut?

‘If you like.’

Carson had placed a smart, expensive car at her disposal, but Joey’s preferred method of transport was the peanut, and the other car stood, ignored and unloved, in the garage.

They went to a nearby aquadrome, and spent the day boating.

Arriving home in the evening, Gina found a message on the answering machine to say that Carson would be late after all. On the whole he kept his promise to be early, but sometimes a delay couldn’t be helped.

Joey was worn out from his day, and almost fell asleep over his tea, so Gina didn’t anticipate trouble at bedtime.

She was wrong.

Joey wanted to stay up to see his father. There followed an argument conducted with furiously flashing fingers, in which Gina tried to convince Joey that ‘bedtime’ meant ‘bedtime’. He could fight his corner as stubbornly as any other child, and after a while he gave up on fingers and settled for shaking his head. Whereupon Gina also gave up on fingers, tossed him over her shoulder and marched upstairs.

She came down half an hour later, worn out but smiling. She poured herself a glass of wine and settled down for an evening with the television. But none of the programmes appealed to her, and she began to rummage among Carson’s collection of videos.

Some were shop-bought, many were business programmes taped from television. At last Gina came to one which had no label or anything to indicate what it might be. Intrigued, she put it on.

She found herself looking at a churchyard on a bright summer’s day. The church was a beautiful old ivy-clad building made of grey stone, with a tower and a steeple. And there, coming through the porch, was a bride and groom.

The bride was dazzlingly lovely in a flowing white dress and veil. Everything about her was perfect-her face, her figure, her hair, the gaze she turned on the young man beside her. And his eyes never left her. For him she was the only woman on earth.

Then Gina realised she was looking at Carson.

This was the wedding of the young Carson Page and Brenda, the girl who’d gone on to become Angelica Duvaine. Barely conscious of her own actions, Gina sat up and leaned forward, alert to every nuance as the young bride and groom came more clearly into view.

Here was Carson as she had never dreamed he could look: a young man with all the hope and joy of life before him, brilliantly, whole-heartedly in love.

It was there in his eyes as he gazed down adoringly at his bride-surely the loveliest bride any groom had been blessed with. They walked out of the church into the sunlight, sure that the sunlight would last for ever.

The cameraman tracked them as they came down the path, laughing and ducking confetti. Then they got into the black limousine, where his arm immediately went around her, drawing her close for a kiss that threatened the ruin of her veil. As they drove off they were oblivious of the crowds. They needed only each other.

A curious little pain had started in Gina’s breast. She wanted to turn the video off and wipe out those glorious young people whose love excluded everyone else. She longed to obliterate that handsome young man who’d thought he had all he could ever want, and nothing could hurt him. Above all, she didn’t want to see the adoration with which he looked at the woman.

She wanted to switch off, but she couldn’t move. She had to watch as the scene moved to the reception. How proudly he escorted his bride to the top table, how tenderly he pulled out a chair for her, and bestowed a quick kiss on her before standing up, then leaned down for another. He kissed her whenever he could.

Now the speeches. ‘On behalf of my wife and myself…’ Cheers and laughter. Carson looked self-conscious and very young. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, so confident and happy, so different from the bitter, tense man he’d become.

The pictures flickered out, then started up again, a few months later. There was Brenda, heavily pregnant, still managing to look glamorous. They were in a garden and Carson was leading her towards a seat, adjusting the cushions, holding her hand, regarding her tenderly, bursting with pride. The pictures faded again.

More pictures. Brenda sitting up in bed, her newborn baby in her arms, a doting expression on her face, yet still managing to pose so that she was seen to best advantage. Even in hospital she was perfectly made up and there was calculation in her every movement. Gina could see it clearly now. She wondered how long it had been before Carson saw it.

There was Carson with his little son in his arms. The boy had grown; he might be a year old. Carson was holding him high in the air, smiling into his eyes, the picture of fatherly pride. The child too looked happy, his face covered in a fat, gleeful baby grin as he gazed down fearlessly at the man whose big hands held him high and safe.

Gently the father lowered his child, settling him on his arm so that they could look at each other. Gina watched, transfixed. The picture was enchanting in itself, but full of heartache to anyone who knew what had come after.

A noise made her turn her head. Joey was standing there, his eyes fixed on the screen. Gina reached out and touched him, drawing him to the sofa to sit beside her.

Have you ever seen this before? she signed.

He shook his head.

‘Do you know who that is?’

Daddy-a long pause-and me.

Now a close-up, showing the pride and joy in Carson’s face as he regarded his son. Joey never moved. His eyes were fixed on his father with a yearning expression that brought tears to Gina’s eyes. What was the child thinking? That he never saw such a look from his father these days?

The screen went dark.

‘That’s it, darling.’ She gave him a hug. ‘Bedtime.’

But Joey shook his head. Again.

Gina hesitated, wondering if this was good for him. But he turned beseeching eyes on her, and she knew she couldn’t refuse him. She rewound to the start of the scene. Joey watched, riveted, a little smile on his face.

Again.

‘Just once more,’ she told him. ‘Then bed.’

Joey took the handset and, to her dismay, wound the tape right back to the start so that the wedding came up again. Gina wished time itself could be rewound, so that she could go back to the point where she was rummaging through the videos. Then she would put that one aside, and never have to see Carson’s face as he looked at the love of his life.

She didn’t doubt that was what Brenda was, because no man ever looked like that at more than one woman. Besides, he’d told her on the night he’d confided about his marriage, ‘I had some very naive notions in those days-true love conquers all… If ever a man and woman loved each other, we did. And it all fell apart like a shoddy toy.’

Brenda had used up all his capacity to love, leaving behind only a husk. Now she knew why he’d drawn back from the kiss that meant so much to her. It wasn’t because of Dan. It was because he was a fair man, and wouldn’t risk making her love him when he had no heart to give. Why, he’d practically warned her!

She closed her eyes, longing to escape the racking jealousy that would overwhelm her if she had to see him gaze at his bride. But it was no use; he was there behind her eyelids. And so was Brenda, her lovely face seeming to say that what was hers was hers for ever, even when she no longer wanted it.

Carson was a prickly, difficult man who went at life like a bull at a gate, and hurt himself more often than anyone else. He expected everything to be as straightforward as a business deal and, when it wasn’t, he was lost. But beneath the rough exterior he was sensitive and easily hurt. He’d reached out to her in his awkward way, and gained a hold on her heart that was painful and unbreakable.

He needed her, at least for the moment. Perhaps, for Joey’s sake, he might even come to feel a kind of affection for her. But he wouldn’t gaze at her with the passionate adoration he’d offered Brenda.

And that was what she wanted, more than she’d ever wanted anything in her whole life. In the years when she’d longed to hear again, she’d thought that was wanting. But it had been nothing like the yearning that possessed her now, for something she could never have.

As the wedding scenes began again she heard Carson’s key in the lock and went to meet him with relief.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, seeing her anxious face.

‘I was watching some of your tapes and I found one that seems to be home movies,’ she said, speaking quickly. ‘There are some pictures of you with Joey when he was a baby, and he came in while I was playing them. Carson, please go carefully. It makes him so happy to see them-I don’t want anything to spoil it for him.’ She saw him frown and added quickly, ‘I suppose I shouldn’t have been looking at your private video-’

‘Never mind. I should have put it away, but I forgot it was there.’

Together they moved quietly into the doorway, and Gina heard Carson’s swift intake of breath. Joey was looking at his mother, smiling at her baby.

The little boy looked up and saw them. He touched the place behind his ear that was almost healed now, and signed something.

‘What did he say?’ Carson asked hoarsely.

Gina spoke with difficulty. ‘He asked-if his mother would come back-when he can hear again.’

She tried to give the child some kind of answer, to say that Brenda hadn’t gone away because of his deafness. But he gazed at her with sad, wise eyes until she gave up. After that he didn’t ask any more.

He watched the scene again, then again. Finally he froze a frame showing Brenda dropping a kiss on the forehead of the child that lay in her arms. And he sat there, gazing at it.

Gina turned away and went hurriedly into the kitchen. After a moment Carson followed her.

‘My God!’ he said softly. ‘My God!’

‘That poor little boy,’ Gina said huskily.

‘All this time I’ve tried to tell myself that Joey understood-about why I’ve tried to keep his mother away-I didn’t know he felt that way about her. Maybe I didn’t give him the chance to tell me.’

‘I do my best for him, but I can’t touch his real pain,’ Gina said with a sigh. ‘She’s his mother.’

‘A terrible mother-’

‘But still, his mother. And he wants her.’

‘He wants a fiction created out of his own imagination. The reality would only break his heart again.’

‘That picture of her holding him wasn’t imagination. It was real.’

‘But it stopped being real the moment she discovered that he had problems with his hearing. Why can’t he face it?’

‘Because he’s not quite eight years old. How can you expect him to face the fact that his mother doesn’t love him?’

‘Especially when his father’s such a miserable failure,’ Carson growled. ‘I suppose he had to cling onto something when I let him down too, and it was easier to fantasise about her, because she isn’t here.’ His eyes met hers. ‘You know all about that.’

‘Yes, I do. But don’t knock yourself. At least you’re trying now.’

‘Perhaps if I talked to him-I can do that now-try to explain that she-that-’

‘Can you explain why she never writes to him, never so much as sends him an email? She could do that easily enough, if she’d only bother.’

‘I thought she did. I’m sure they email each other.’

‘Yes, I thought so, until I read some of hers. She doesn’t write them, Carson. They read like a press release. I’m sure her secretary is very efficient.’

‘Damn her!’ he breathed.

‘Please, go and say something to him now.’

To their relief Joey was no longer looking at his mother. He’d returned to the pictures of himself and his father. As Carson came in he looked up and signed something.

‘Is that me?’ Gina translated, seeing that Carson was having trouble.

He put himself where Joey could see. ‘Yes, that’s you,’ he said slowly. ‘You were a great kid and-and you still are.’

The brilliant happiness in his son’s smile shocked him. Such a small compliment, but it meant the world to a child who wasn’t used to being told he was valued.

Joey pointed to the screen, and his fingers worked fast.

‘Where-?’ Carson concentrated hard. ‘Where was-Mummy? Mummy was taking our picture.’

More signing.

‘I don’t understand,’ Carson said urgently to Gina.

‘He said, “Were we all happy?”’

A strange, withered look came over Carson’s face. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘Yes, we were happy.’

Before Joey could ask another question Gina tapped him on the shoulder and signed, Hungry?

Luckily this diverted him and he scrambled off the sofa and into the kitchen. Carson secured the video and put it away before following Joey and settling down to talk to him, while Gina put some pizza in the oven.

She deliberately stayed in the background until the snack was over and they put Joey back to bed together. The child was happy now, unaware that his very happiness was turning a knife in his father’s heart.

When they had left the room and closed the door Carson said, ‘Los Angeles is eight hours behind us. I might get her.’

He went down to his office and dialled his ex-wife’s number. Gina didn’t try to listen, but she couldn’t help hearing Carson saying, with edgy patience, ‘Just get her to the phone. I’ll wait.’

It was a long wait. Gina took him coffee and he gave her a brief smile.

‘She’s a star, and they never come to the phone at once,’ he said wryly.

But at last it seemed that Brenda had kept him waiting as long as she felt her status demanded, and Gina heard him say, ‘Brenda-what are you-? Never mind that. I need to talk to you seriously.’

Gina slipped out of earshot, although she longed to hear what Carson said.

She busied herself about the kitchen, finding things to do, trying not to think of what might be being said in Carson’s study, and why it was taking so long.

He would be trying to make Brenda see that her place was with her son. They might even have a reconciliation. That would be the best thing for Joey. That was what she wanted.

Or, at least, she might make herself want it, if she tried hard enough.

But when Carson returned his face told a story of defeat.

‘She says she’s about to start some TV show, and she hasn’t time to visit him,’ he said bitterly. ‘She also reminded me of the efforts I’d made to keep them apart, which I suppose I deserved. I suggested taking Joey out there to see her, and she nearly had hysterics. Nobody knows she has a deaf son, and nobody must know. Some mother!’

‘Did you tell her about the operation?’

‘I tried. But Brenda listens to about one word in ten. I got halfway before she broke in, “Do you mean he’s cured now?” I tried to explain that it isn’t a cure, and even when he can hear something he’s still going to need time and a lot of help before he can talk. When she discovered that nobody had waved a magic wand she lost interest.’

‘But even if one parent is lost to him, he still has the other. You can be the best father there’s ever been, and the happier he is with you, the less he’ll miss her. And I’m here to help.’

He closed his eyes suddenly, just as he’d done at their first meeting.

‘Show me the way, Gina,’ he said softly. ‘This is the most important thing in the world, and I can’t do it without you.’

His weariness touched her heart. She wanted to reach out and enfold him in her arms, promise to make everything right for him. But she knew if she did that she would try to make him kiss her again, and she didn’t dare. She wasn’t sure where she stood with him, or what he really wanted.

But once the thought had come to her she couldn’t keep her eyes from his mouth, so that she seemed to feel it on hers again, as it had been only last night. Surely he remembered how it had been? What was to stop him kissing her again?

‘Gina,’ he said uncertainly.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m sorry I was late getting home tonight. I know I promised.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said, trying to hide her disappointment. ‘But time is passing and soon he’ll be back at school. You promised him a holiday.’

‘Can we still take it-as he is?’

‘He can’t fly or go swimming, but if we stick to our original plan he’ll be all right.’

‘Then next week I’m clearing my desk, and we’ll go.’

‘That’s marvellous. Joey will be so thrilled.’

‘I’ll have to leave the planning to you-to you and Joey. Arrange whatever he wants, even if it means visiting every aquarium in the country.’

‘Oh, no,’ she said seriously. ‘Only one or two come up to his standards. But he’ll tell you all about that.’