Cruel Legacy (63 page)

Unsteadily Sally walked up the garden path. The car was parked behind her at an angle in the road although she had no knowledge of actually driving it home. She must have done so, though. She shuddered, trembling violently as she searched in her bag for her key and unlocked the back door.

The house was still empty and silent. Joel had obviously not returned from the hospital.

She went upstairs slowly and painfully. She felt so old... drained... exhausted... terrified of letting her concentration slip in case she started visualising all over again the way Kenneth had looked at her.

Nothing in her life had prepared her for what had happened. The thought of being sexually repugnant to a man who had claimed that he loved her, of being rejected by him, was completely outside her personal experience, alien to the way she believed men and women related to one another.

It had never crossed her mind that Kenneth would react to what she was doing with anything other than eagerness and desire. Whenever she had voluntarily dressed prettily for Joel, shown him that she wanted sex, he had always responded positively to her. She had heard other women complaining about their husbands' lack of physical interest in them, of course, especially some of the older and more outspoken nurses on the wards, but it had never occurred to her that it might be something that could happen to
her.

She had been stupidly naive, she admitted... naive and worse.. .but she had thought that Kenneth wanted her.. .that he wanted...

She froze as she heard a car pull up outside. Joel was back.

Joel frowned as he saw how Sally had parked her car. He still felt guilty about the way he had over-reacted and criticised her in the hospital but he had been so terrified of doing the wrong thing, his fear shocking him into the realisation of how many times when the children were growing up Sally must have felt as he had done—alone...afraid; but she had never let him see it... never taken it out on him the way he...

She had looked so hurt when it had been him Cathy had turned to and not her. He understood just how that felt.

He opened the kitchen door, expecting to find Sally in the kitchen. Cathy had insisted on being dropped off at her best friend's so that she could relate every detail of her 'ordeal' to her, and Joel suspected that Sally would be annoyed with him for giving in and letting her.

Paul was down at the leisure centre, now that the danger to his sister was over returning their relationship to the state of semi-siege which existed between them.

He had shown last night where his true feelings lay, though, Joel reflected, remembering his son's frightened face.

The house felt disturbingly silent, a small, worrying thread of instinct tightening wamingly inside him.

Without knowing why, he took the stairs two at a time. Sally heard him and cowered back against the bed. She couldn't face Joel now... Not now. Tears filled her eyes and ran helplessly down her face while her body trembled uncontrollably. Distantly her trained mind registered what was happening, had made its clinical diagnosis... Shock... she was in shock... Talk to the patient calmly, reassure her... keep her warm... but she was the patient, wasn't she, and so how could she do any of those things...?

'Sally...'

Joel pushed open the door and then stopped abruptly. 'Sally, what is it.. .what's wrong?'

Instinctively he lowered his voice, speaking slowly and gently as he moved towards her.

She was shaking violently, her body racked by intense bouts of shivering, tears flooding silently and slowly from her eyes.

It was like watching someone crying blood. He had never seen her looking so shaken or afraid. Automatically he responded to her need, reaching out for her, taking her gently in his arms, holding her, rocking her, soothing her as he stroked her hair, crooning soft words of comfort in her ear.

This was the Joel she had loved, Sally recognised through her pain, the Joel she had needed and missed so desperately.

This was what she had gone to Kenneth expecting to find. The appalling irony that she should find it now, here in Joel's arms after what she had done, sliced her with a pain so intense that she cried out against it.

'Sally, what is it... what's happened?'

She could hear the concern, the alarm in Joel's voice but instead of answering him she simply burrowed closer against him. The feel of him, his smell, his warmth, his familiarity were suddenly the only security she had.

Beneath the thinness of her dress Joel's hand registered the presence of her suspender belt and stockings.

A cold shock of male knowledge numbed him. There could only be one reason for Sally to dress like that.

He had told Philippa that their marriage was over, their love dead, but now the thought of Sally, his wife, in the arms of another man made him realise the truth. It wasn't just jealousy that seared and burned him, he recognised, it was fear for Sally as well; fear for her and a wild, fierce anger against the man responsible for her grief.

As he started to pull away from her, Sally clung to him. She didn't want Joel to let her go... not now... not ever...

She didn't ever again want to be that woman whom Kenneth had stared at with such disgust and distaste. She wanted to be what she had always wanted to be; she wanted to be protected by Joel's love, to be held safe by it and by him.

As he saw how distressed she was, Joel felt his jealousy turn to compassion and pity, his need to reassure her overwhelming his desire to know what had happened.

'It's all right...' he told her soothingly. 'It's all right... Whatever happened...'

'Nothing happened... nothing...'

Sally was shivering violently, her teeth chattering, but as Joel heard the agony in her voice he knew, without knowing how he knew it, that, whatever impulse had led to her dressing so obviously for sex, it had not been desire that had motivated her, and it was not from the arms of her lover or from his bed that she had come back home in such a state of distress.

Unfair and illogical of him to feel relieved that she had not been physically unfaithful to him, he knew...

'Hold me, Joel... Make love to me... take me to bed... Make love to me...'

Sally was as shocked to hear her words as Joel looked, but when Joel hesitated, watching her, her shock gave way to panic. Kenneth had rejected her; what if Joel did too?

'Joel... please...'

It hurt him hearing her beg him like this, looking at her and seeing the fear and panic in her eyes... he wanted to take hold of her and wipe it away, to tell her there was no need for her to punish herself like this, to pretend to want him when he could see from her eyes and her body that sex was the last thing she really wanted; but he wasn't sure he was capable of finding the right words, words that would comfort and not hurt, and so instead he cupped her face in his hands, smoothing back her hair, damp and sticky from her tears, her skin hot and flushed beneath his hands, her eyes more terrified than they had been that very first time she had let him touch her intimately.

But then she had trusted him... and wanted him as well, even though shyness had made her loath to admit it...

'It's all right, Sally, everything's going to be all right.' He kissed her gently and without passion, stilling the trembling of her mouth with the slow, sure warmth of his own.

A kiss of peace and knowledge rather than one of desire.

'How can everything be all right?' Sally asked him wretchedly when he stopped kissing her. 'How can anything ever be all right again...?'

Slowly trying to feel his way through her pain without adding to the distress she had already suffered, Joel told her, 'It can if we want >t to be. If that's what we both want. What do you want, Sal...?'

'I want everything to be the way it used to be,' Sally told him brokenly. 'Joel, I'm so frightened,' she whispered to him. 'Everything's changed so much... No one wants me or needs me any more...'

7 need you,' Joel told her quietly, and as he said the words he knew, illuminatingly, that they were true. 'You love her,' Philippa had told him, and he had denied it... His heart ached with shame and guilt.

It hurt him seeing her like this, afraid and vulnerable, and it hurt him even more knowing that he was partly to blame; that he had punished her for his own sense of inadequacy in losing his job, letting her shoulder burdens he had had no right to expect her to carry, simply because his own ego could not accept the reversal of their traditional roles.

He had blamed her for turning away from him and making him seek sexual consolation with someone else. Did she similarly blame him?

Beneath his hands he could feel her body trembling still.

'Make love to me... take me to bed...' she had begged him, and perhaps after all it would be a good thing to do; the making of a new commitment to one another; the acknowledgement that there were things they were leaving behind, things too painful to discuss now but which would have to be dealt with ultimately.

Sally tensed as she felt Joel sliding free the buttons fastening her dress. It had been a long time since he had undressed her like this, she acknowledged, his mouth caressing her skin as he exposed it to his gaze and touch.

Her awareness of his arousal and desire were reassuringly familiar even though her relieved gratitude for them was not.

She tensed momentarily as he slid off her dress, holding her breath while she waited for him to make some comment about her choice of underwear, but all he did was gently remove it and then tell her softly, 'That's better—this is how I like you best... with nothing to come between us.'

Sally gazed uncertainly at him. Had he chosen those words deliberately? Had he after all guessed and was now trying to tell her...?

She trembled on the brink of guilt and anxiety, her eyes searching his as she began uncertainly, 'Joel, there's something I should tell you..."

'There's only one thing I need to hear you say,' Joel told her softly. 'Do you still love me?' he prompted her when she stared at him in confusion. 'Because that's all that really matters, isn't it, Sal... all that should matter? That we love one another... The rest...well, we can find a way of sorting that out later...'

She did love him, Sally recognised as her body trembled with relief and joy... Because this was the Joel she had originally fallen in love with, the Joel who had always loved and protected her.

'Yes... yes. I love you,' she told him.

It might not have been the most passionate and intensely sexual lovemaking he had ever known, Joel reflected an hour later as he lay on his side, Sally's sleeping body curled up back against his as though even in sleep she needed to know he was close to her, but there had been a special quality about it nevertheless, a sense of shared intimacy and awareness of the significance of what they were doing, an acknowledgement of what still lay ahead of them.

Perhaps neither of them would ever discuss fully with the other exactly what had happened, not out of deceit but out of love and the need to protect one another. Some things were far more hurtful to hear than to say. It was enough for him now that he knew Sally was here with him through her own choice, that for whatever reason she had held back from making a sexual or emotional commitment to the man she had dressed so sensually for, and if it hurt him to know that she would never have chosen willingly to dress like that for him, then perhaps he ought to look at his own responsibility for that, instead of assuming that all the responsibility was hers.

Perhaps he had been guilty of focusing too much on the sexual aspects of their relationship in the past, expecting her to know that for him sex and love were two different faces of the same coin.

'I need to know that you want, need me... that you love me,' she had whispered to him as he held her. 'I need it to be more than just a physical thing, just a body for you to use to satisfy yourself, Joel.'

'You've never been that,' he had assured her. 'Never... It's just that sex has sometimes been the only way I could get your attention... I need to feel needed as well,' he had told her gruffly. 'I need to feel that I'm loved and not just a useless waste of space who can't even look after you financially any more... Have you any idea how much that hurts me... how bad it makes me feel?' he had asked her softly, and he had seen from her expression that she hadn't.

'It hurts like hell, Sally... It makes me feel that I'm a failure—that I've failed
you.'

'No, you haven't,' she'd assured him. 'It's not your fault the factory closed, and you never know—this work you're doing at the leisure centre could lead to something,' she had added gently.

'Maybe.. .but don't count on it,' Joel had warned her. 'We could manage on less, you know,' he added. 'I hate seeing you looking so tired all the time... knowing... We

don't need two cars. We could get rid of mine... I could buy a bike and become a real environmentalist,' he had teased her when she had started to protest. 'I could advertise and maybe get some more private pupils. A couple of the guys who go down to the leisure centre who are out of work are talking about setting up a sort of self-help group...a sort of trade and barter system with everyone pitching in with what they can do. It won't bring in much money, but if we're careful we could manage on less and '