The Strength Of Desire

‘I could have stayed with Vicki,’ Hope lamented, still hoping that Jack might change his mind.

‘Vicki,’ Jack repeated her best friend’s name, ‘is a nice kid, but, be honest, how much use would she be in a crisis? She is the original dizzy blonde.’

Hope bristled silently, but couldn’t deny the truth of it. Vicki had been enormous fun at boarding-school and a good friend since. Catering for the needs of a pregnant woman, however, wasn’t one of her talents.

‘Anyway, Vicki’s asked if she can come on the tour,’ Jack reminded her. ‘I don’t know if she’ll be much help, but, as a favour to you, I’ve agreed.’

‘All right,’ Hope sighed, resigned to her fate.

Three months staying in the wilds of Cornwall with Jack’s mother. That she didn’t mind. It was the fact that the lady also happened to be brother Guy’s mother. Did this mean she might have regular contact with him?

She had not seen Guy Delacroix since their first meeting. He had been as good as his word and not attended their wedding, although his mother had.

In her late fifties, Caroline Delacroix had seemed younger. Her hair was silvery-blonde and her face, despite signs of aging, still had an English-rose bloom to it. She was a sharp, intelligent woman, without being an intellectual, and she spoke her mind.

‘I don’t suppose you’re going to listen to me, but I think you’re probably too young and certainly too good for my son,’ she’d finally announced, after they’d taken tea together.

Already liking the woman, Hope hadn’t been too upset by her comments. ‘Your other son’s already said the same. Well, the too young part, anyway.’

‘Yes, I understand Guy tried to warn you,’ Caroline had confirmed, ‘and that you and he didn’t exactly hit it off.’

‘Not so you’d notice.’ Hope had made a slight face. ‘What did he say?’

‘Nothing much. Just that you were “bloody impossible”,’ his mother had confided, but with an amused air that softened any offence. ‘With Guy, that could be a compliment. He doesn’t like women who fall over themselves to please him. Unfortunately, most do.’

‘Well, this one won’t,’ Hope had vowed then to Caroline Delacroix, and vowed now, as she travelled down to the Delacroix family home in Cornwall.

It was actually her first visit. Jack’s mother had come to London to meet her before the wedding, and, almost straight after it, had disappeared on a two-month tour of China. On her return, she’d stopped over briefly in London, issuing an invitation for Hope to come down to Cornwall any time she liked. But Jack’s work schedule had precluded even a weekend trip, and Hope’s only recent contact with her mother-in-law had been over the telephone. The older woman had been pleased at the prospect of being a grandmother, and had willingly agreed to her spending the final months of her pregnancy in Cornwall, but Hope still felt she was intruding when they finally drove up to the Delacroix family home.

It was called Heron’s View, and Hope could immediately see why. It sat on a clifftop overlooking the Atlantic and was the most wonderful house she had ever seen. It was a house from a fairy-story, with turrets and towers, walled gardens and secret places. It was large and imposing without being grandiose or ostentatious. It suggested a bygone era, of the years before the First World War, when large families were the norm, and Hope could imagine voices of children echoing through the twists and turns of the many stone passages.

‘It belonged to my father’s family. There were seven of them, and he inherited as the eldest,’ Caroline relayed as they stood in the hall which was at the centre of the house, with rooms leading off and a wide staircase leading up. ‘He, in turn, gave it to my eldest sister who never married. She died a couple of years ago.’

‘Is that when you moved in?’ Hope quizzed.

‘Oh, no, I’ve always lived here—’ Caroline smiled round the shabby hall with pleasure ‘—apart from the ten years I spent in France. I returned with the boys here. My father gave it to Hetty because he felt I was secure financially, but it was always a family house. Hetty helped me bring the boys up, too, although she was rather more interested in her dogs.’

‘She had six,’ Jack put in. ‘Red setters. She dedicated her life to breeding a Cruft’s champion.’

‘Did she manage?’ Hope asked, interested.

‘Not exactly,’ Caroline replied, ‘but one of her dogs was the grandfather of a supreme champion…Anyway, I hope you like dogs.’

Hope nodded. ‘We had a retriever when I was little.’ ‘Good,’ Caroline nodded, ‘because Guy seems to have inherited some of Hetty’s fanaticism. He keeps three setters, and each is as mad as the other. I insisted he lock them away until you were settled.’

‘Guy keeps his dogs here.’ Hope trusted that was all she meant.

But a deep, drawling voice answered her. ‘Guy keeps himself here, too,’ and, as Hope’s eyes were drawn, horrified, to the back of the hall, Guy Delacroix emerged from the shadows.

‘There you are,’ Caroline greeted her son with fond exasperation. ‘I called to you that they’d arrived but you seemed to have disappeared.’

‘I was locking up the hounds, as requested,’ he answered his mother, but his eyes slid to Hope, acknowledging the difference in her.

When they had first met, she had been as slim as a reed and in the best of health, her long blonde hair silky, her complexion soft and clear. In a maternity dress, with hair escaping from a hastily tied ribbon and her skin with a bluey-white tinge, she looked like the drudge she felt.

‘You’ve changed,’ he said bluntly, and Hope could have cried.

But she was tougher than that. She asked herself if she cared what he thought, and, lying to herself, decided she didn’t.

‘You haven’t,’ she answered him, and her tone said it was a pity.

Jack recognised the enmity between them, and, if anything, was amused. But a frown lined Caroline’s forehead, as it occurred to her that life at Heron’s View might be less than smooth in the coming months.

Guy was unruffled, continuing, ‘I assume no one informed you I was in residence.’

Before Hope could answer, Jack slipped in, ‘I didn’t want to scare her off, little brother.’

‘No, I don’t imagine you did,’ Guy echoed drily, and clearly meant more than his words said.

Jack appeared to understand. He gave his brother a conspiratorial smile. It was not returned by Guy, however. He was stony-faced.

Hope wondered how these two men could be brothers. Jack was charm itself; Guy was charmless.

Their mother decided it was time to move things on. ‘Would you like to see your room? Guy suggested you might prefer some privacy, so we’ve rearranged things to give you most of the west wing.’

‘Thank you,’ Hope acknowledged in a small voice, but didn’t look at Guy. She wasn’t fooled. It was the family that was to have privacy from her.

Caroline led the way upstairs while Guy and Jack went to take in her cases. The west wing, as the name suggested, was almost a separate part of the house. It was reached by a long corridor off the main stairway. As well as a large double bedroom, it boasted an adjoining bathroom and dressing-room. The most interesting feature, however, was a perfectly circular room inset in one of the turrets. It had been turned into a small sitting-room, with a wonderful view over the cliffs and the Atlantic beyond. From it led a staircase that wound down to the back courtyard.

Hope loved the room, and didn’t hide her enthusiasm from Caroline. The older woman smiled in relief, saying, ‘Oh, I am glad you like it. I thought Guy’s taste might be a little functional for a young girl.’

‘These are Guy’s rooms?’ Hope repeated, her face falling.

Caroline realised her mistake and quickly reassured her. ‘Yes, but don’t worry. You’re not putting him out. He’s only really here at the weekends, and he was quite happy to move to the east wing.’

Anywhere, as long as it was away from her, Hope thought for a moment, then told herself not to be so paranoid. Guy Delacroix mightn’t be keen on her, but she wasn’t that important to him.

And so it appeared, in the next couple of months as she lived in limbo in the house on the cliff. Caroline was kind without being effusive. Guy was largely absent. His work was based in Truro and during the week he stayed there. If she saw him at weekends, it was only in passing or at dinner on Sundays. Pleading sickness, she could miss even that contact. If things had not gone so drastically wrong with her pregnancy, they probably could have maintained their distance for her whole stay at Heron’s View.

But things did go wrong. It was six weeks before the birth. She had seen almost as little of Jack as she had of his brother, with him returning only for the odd visit between concert dates. And separation had not improved their relationship. While she was tired from heavy pregnancy, he was running in overdrive from his tour. He longed to be doing, drinking, partying, carrying on as before, only he was chained to her by duty.

‘It’ll be all right after the baby,’ he kept saying, and Hope felt the reassurance was as much for himself as for her.

It actually made her heart sink as she realised the life Jack was planning for them. The tours and the concerts and the travelling would continue. She would go with him. The baby would stay at home with a nanny.

But Hope couldn’t share the vision. No matter how sick or how lonely she felt, she already loved the child inside her. To leave him, or her, would be an agony. But, if she didn’t, she knew she might lose Jack.

She sometimes wondered if she’d lost him already. His visits were so infrequent. Only tears had extracted a promise from him to be at her side for the week before and after the birth.

In the end he didn’t make it. The baby came early. It was terrifying.

She was alone. Caroline had offered to stay in, but Hope had insisted she go to her regular Friday bridge evening. Guy hadn’t returned from Truro.

The storm began at nine. Normally Hope wasn’t scared of a little lightning or thunder. But this wasn’t a little; this was an electric display of pyrotechnics that lit up the sky. She watched at the window of her sitting-room as the waves crashed against the cliff-face and the rain came down in a sheet. She went to another window, looking on to the courtyard, and was in time to see a bolt of lightning flash out of the sky and seem to hit the roof of Heron’s View. She started in surprise.

It was a couple of minutes before she realised it wasn’t just her heart that was contracting with fright. The baby was coming. She tried not to panic. She had rehearsed in her mind so many times what they would do, but it had always been ‘they’. Now she was on her own.

The thought occurred to her that she would always be on her own. It was a bleak prospect. She pushed it away and concentrated on the practicalities.

She went to the telephone to do the obvious—call an ambulance. The line was dead. She couldn’t believe it. She banged down the receiver, as if that might cure some temporary fault. It didn’t.

Once more she told herself not to panic, but it was harder now. What to do? Drive. Drive what? The old MGB Guy kept in one of the garages. Did it work? Where were the keys? Could she get her bump behind the steering-wheel?

A sob escaped her, but she stifled a second one. If she wanted this baby to live, she had to keep her head. Driving to the hospital wasn’t feasible. She had to wait until Caroline arrived home; that could only be two hours away, maybe three. Meanwhile she had to go downstairs while she could still move. If she didn’t, it was possible that Caroline might go to bed without checking on her.

She got to her feet and went out into the corridor and along to the main staircase. She held on tightly to the rail as she descended. She hadn’t become too large in late pregnancy, but she’d remained tired and weak through low iron-levels. She was almost downstairs when another contraction ripped through her body. Clutching her swollen stomach, she sat down on the third step and tried to breathe the pain away.

It seemed an interminable time that she sat on that step, praying for help to come. The contractions were coming every five minutes when she heard the outer door bang open. She could have cried with relief.

With what seemed the last breath in her body, she called out, ‘Caroline,’ then gasped once more as another contraction tore through her. She threw her head back, her brow damp with the sweat of effort and fear.

But it wasn’t Caroline.

Guy Delacroix came into the hall, rain dripping off his black hair. ‘It’s me.’

He took one look at Hope and assessed the situation.

She looked back—in horror. It should have been relief. Help was at last at hand. But her very first reaction was horror.

‘You’re in labour.’ He frowned in disbelief.

She nodded.

‘Have you called an ambulance?’ he added.

‘I tried,’ she breathed out. ‘The line seems to be dead.’ ‘I’ll try again.’ He crossed to the telephone in the hall.

She watched him as he confirmed that the line was dead. He seemed amazingly controlled, but then he wasn’t the one in labour.

He looked at her again, judging the urgency of the situation, before saying, ‘Right. I’ll get my car back out of the garage and bring it round.’

He left her, and Hope struggled to contain her panic. She was scared for herself. She was scared for the baby. It was far too early.

Guy returned shortly. He must have run to the garage. When he appeared at the door, Hope tried to lift herself up, but the next contraction hit her just then. The wave of pain made her sink back on the step.

He walked over to her and waited until the pain subsided before helping her up.

‘Put your arm round my shoulders,’ he instructed quietly, and, bearing much of her weight, took her out to his car. He installed her in the back where she could stretch out.

‘I’ll write a note for my mother. Hopefully she’ll follow on to be with you,’ he informed her, and returned to the house.

He was gone only a minute or two, but it seemed like an age. He arranged over her a blanket he’d brought, before climbing into the front and setting the car in motion. Hope curled up like the foetus inside her and wished it were all over.

He didn’t bother her with unnecessary conversation. He just drove. When she gasped with pain, he asked, ‘How frequent are the contractions?’

‘Every four or five minutes,’ she answered, wondering if it would mean anything to him.

Perhaps it did, as he seemed to increase his speed. It was a tortuous route down the hillside from Heron’s View to the main road, but he took the bends with practised ease, seemingly unaffected by the flashes of lightning that lit up the sky.

Hope was frightened, but his calmness helped her contain her own fear. They arrived at the hospital without mishap, and, after taking directions from a car-park attendant, Guy drove straight up to the maternity department partment entrance. Then he left her briefly to find a nurse, who recognised the situation as a far from normal labour and the next thing Hope knew she was on a hospital trolley being pushed along corridors to the delivery suite.

She was still dressed in her night gown and robe, and a midwife helped her out of the robe, but she indicated that she wished to keep her nightie on, especially with Guy Delacroix still at her side.

He stood frowning down at her, perhaps wondering how to extricate himself, then another contraction made her draw her knees up.

‘Hold her hand, Dad,’ the nurse instructed briskly. ‘I think your baby’s well on its way.’

He remained still for a moment. Hope waited for him to deny the identity that had been thrust upon him. Instead he took her hand in his.

‘He’s not—’ Hope tried to explain the true situation, but another contraction ripped through her. It was the worst yet. She couldn’t believe the pain.

She gripped Guy’s hand as if she could transfer some of the pain to him. It seemed to help. At any rate, she had no breath left for explanations as the doctor on call appeared.

Everything happened very quickly after that. She had started to haemorrhage. The doctor decided a Caesarean was the only option. Before they could wheel her into an operating theatre, she lost consciousness, still holding Guy’s hand.

They did their best, but it was already too late. Her baby, her first-born, had been a boy. A perfectly formed baby boy who had never drawn breath in the world outside.

Some time later she woke to find herself attached to a drip. Guy was by her side, waiting. He said no words. She saw the truth in his eyes.

She’d always considered him a cold, emotionless man, and perhaps he was, but that night he held her in his arms while she cried out her grief and bitterness at losing her first baby.

He was still there in the morning. He had sat by her bedside while she slept. He took her hand when she woke.

Hope bit back tears and said, ‘I’m sorry,’ for it should have been Jack who was there, Jack who was sharing her suffering.

He shook his head, and asked simply, ‘How do you feel?’

‘Empty.’ Hope put a hand to her stomach to protect her baby. But he was gone. He was dead. ‘Can I see him?’

‘If that’s what you want.’ Guy accepted her need to see the baby as if it was the most natural thing in the world. ‘I’ll speak to the nurse.’

He arranged it for her. The baby was brought to her, wrapped in a blue shawl. Guy sat with her while she held her child for the first time, and the last. He let her cry over that small, lifeless human being, then held her again when she cried as they took the baby away.

Somehow she survived that terrible day, and what Guy had been to her remained their secret.

Caroline appeared in the afternoon. Because of the storm, she’d stayed overnight with a friend and had just returned to find Guy’s note.

She took over from Guy at Hope’s bedside, while he went to follow up the calls he’d already made to Jack, currently on the other side of the Atlantic.

Flowers with sympathy notes arrived before Jack finally did, a day later. Only then did Guy fade into the background, possibly relieved that his brother was there to grieve with her.

But, of course, he didn’t. He talked, but his words weren’t the right ones. He tried to console her with the idea that she had been too young for a baby. Only her body didn’t think so. It longed to hold the life it had briefly created.

Jack had no desire to see their baby, either. It had never been real to him. Hope had given him a nameSamuel—but Jack never used it.

She remained in hospital for a week, then returned home to Heron’s View. Jack went back to his tour, suggesting she join him when she was properly recovered.

Perhaps it was then that she should have left him, when her love for him had already died a little with their baby. But she just couldn’t accept the failure. Growing up, she’d watched each of her father’s marriages disintegrate with frightening ease. She’d promised herself that things would be different for her. She felt there was no choice but to stay with Jack.

It must have seemed weakness to Guy Delacroix. He continued to be kind to her after she left hospital, but the kindness changed to incredulity when she announced her intention over dinner one night of flying over to the States to be with Jack.

If Caroline Delacroix had any reservations, she kept them to herself. Guy waited until his mother left the room before he expressed his.

‘You can’t go,’ he told her from across the table. ‘You look like hell.’

‘Thanks.’ Hope pulled a face but took no offence. She was growing used to Guy’s bluntness, and she was still grateful to him for looking after her during her labour, and afterwards.

‘You know what I mean,’ he accused gruffly. ‘It’s only been four weeks. The doctor said you needed to rest.’

‘Well, I won’t be working in America,’ she countered.

‘That isn’t the point!’ he went on in exasperation. ‘Who’s going to look after you if you do get sick? And don’t say Jack. He can barely look after himself.’

Out of loyalty, Hope felt she should challenge the latter comment. The trouble was that she suspected it was true. Jack could not be relied on.

‘I have to go,’ she said simply. ‘Jack’s my husband.’

She considered it an adequate reason but Guy didn’t, snapping back, ‘That’s a mistake you can remedy.’

This time Hope was hurt. ‘Why are you so against me, Guy?’

‘God, I’m not against you, Hope. That’s the last thing I am. If you knew—’ He stopped himself in mid-sentence, and changed to saying, ‘I’m just worried about you. You’re still so…’

‘Young,’ Hope concluded for him, and shook her head. ‘No, I’m not, Guy. Not any more.’

Hope didn’t think she’d ever be young again. Grief had made her old.

Guy understood, and his anger gave way to compassion. He reached across the table to lay his hand over hers. The gesture was too much for Hope. She didn’t want his pity. She didn’t want even to think what she might have wanted from Guy, had things been different.

She took her hand away and rushed from the dining-room. He didn’t follow.

She left for the States just a day later, without talking to Guy again.

But she was to return.

CHAPTER TWO

‘THERE’S a man hanging around outside,’ Maxine announced some time later, having tracked her mother down to the kitchen.

‘A man?’ Hope’s mind returned sharply to the present ‘He’s been there a couple of minutes,’ Maxine relayed. ‘I think he’s deciding if he has the right address. He has it written down, but, of course, our nine has come loose and turned into a six…I’m sure I told you.’

‘Yes.’ Hope recalled that Maxine had informed her several times.

The bell rang and Maxine continued, ‘That’ll be him. He must have worked out that if we’re next door to twenty-one and seventeen we can’t possibly be sixteen. I suppose it’s one way of discouraging any totally moronic visitors, but I really would fix it, Mum, if I were you.’

‘Thank you, Maxine, I will.’ Hope wondered what she’d done to deserve a daughter so different from her.

A tidiness freak, Maxine couldn’t stand things out of place or not working. Her own room was immaculate at all times and she reserved her most expressive sighs for her mother’s hit-or-miss style of housekeeping.

She watched now with a disapproving eye as her mother riffled through a pile of papers on the kitchen table.

‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’ she asked, when the bell rang again.

‘Could you?’ Hope appealed. ‘It’s a motorcycle courier from one of the ad agencies. He’s been sent to pick up some jingles I’ve written, only I’ve misplaced them.’

‘Really, Mum.’ Maxine despaired of her mother’s inefficiency, before running on, ‘He doesn’t look much like a courier to me. He doesn’t have a helmet, for a start.’

‘He’ll have left it on his bike,’ Hope declared. ‘Please, Maxine…before he decides to give up.’

‘All right.’ Maxine shrugged and disappeared out of the kitchen.

Hope continued searching for the lost music sheets she should have had ready. They represented three days’ work and a fairly good commission.

Maxine reappeared. ‘He wants to see you, but he’s not a courier.’

‘Did you ask him who he was?’ Hope frowned.

‘No, but he looks OK,’ Maxine assured her. ‘He’s wearing a suit and tie and he was fairly polite.’

‘Oh, no, he’s probably a double-glazing salesman.’ Hope had a disproportionately high number of such callers, possibly because the metal window frames of her 1930s semi were so rusted. ‘I’m hopeless at getting rid of them.’

‘Just tell him we have no money,’ Maxine suggested, before wandering back into the sitting-room to rejoin her friend.

Hope raised her eyes at Maxine’s comment, and wondered how she was meant to take it. Helpful advice? A statement of fact? A complaint? Or all three?