Deception and Desire (37 page)

Van thought about it and he came to a decision. When Van came to a decision it was, as far as he was concerned, a
fait accompli.

‘I can't do it!' Dinah said. She was white with shock and horror. ‘Van – you can't be serious! I can't give my baby up for adoption!'

‘And I can't keep it,' Van said flatly. ‘ I've tried to accept it and I can't. I'm sorry, but there it is. At least I'm being honest. Better to face up to it now than to ruin all our lives.'

‘It wouldn't ruin mine – it's my baby!'

‘But not mine. And it would certainly ruin our marriage.'

‘Van, I couldn't! I couldn't!'

‘Dinah.' Van adopted a reasoning tone. ‘ You must know how I feel. I should think it's been plain enough these last weeks and it is going to get worse. What sort of a life would your child have, knowing that his father hated him? Now if he was adopted he would have two loving parents who really wanted him. Surely you can see the sense of that?'

‘I can see that you've gone mad! I won't talk about this any more!'

‘Dinah …'

‘Be quiet! Be quiet!' Tears were streaming down her face. Love for her stirred him, then he glanced down at the bulge of her stomach and hardened his heart.

‘All right, Dinah, if that's the way you want it. But please realise I am in deadly earnest about this. I will not have this child. I will not bring him up as my own. If you insist on keeping him you can consider our marriage over.'

She took a step back as if he had hit her, hands flying to her mouth.

‘Van …'

‘I mean it. The choice is yours. Me – or the baby. You can't have both.'

‘I thought you loved me!'

‘I do love you.' His voice softened. ‘I love you very much. We can have a wonderful life together, you and I. We are right together, two halves of a whole – and not only in marriage but in business too. We proved that, working on the new designs together. You have the talent and the vision, I have the business acumen and the wherewithal. We could start something new together, branch out and build a company of our own that would be exactly the way we wanted it. And we'd have each other. Wouldn't that be better than you fending for the baby all alone? What sort of a life would that be for you or the baby?'

‘I don't believe I'm hearing this …'

His voice hardened again. ‘You are hearing it, my dear. I'm sorry, but my mind is made up.'

Dinah began to feel sick. She was starting to learn that when Van said his mind was made up no amount of argument or pleading would change it. Once, she thought, she might have been able to sway him; but not now, not with her body so swollen and ugly he couldn't even bear to look at her. And even then, she thought, it might not have worked; Van was totally intransigent, he saw things in black and white, never the shades of grey between. If he had turned so decisively against the baby she did not think that anything on earth would change his mind.

And in a way she understood. She had known right from the start, hadn't she, that there was no way he would accept the situation. That was why she had run away. But Van had come after her and for a little while she had dared to believe she had been wrong. But she had not been wrong. She had been right first time. Van wanted her but not the baby. And that was precisely what he intended to get, no more, no less.

She wiped her face with a shaking hand. ‘It's all very well, but what would you tell people? Everyone knows I'm pregnant – your family, friends, employees at the factory, everyone! And they all think the baby is yours. How could you possibly tell them you had had your baby adopted?'

‘I've thought of that.' He turned, ostensibly to open a window, but somehow she knew it was to avoid having to face her. ‘I'll book you into a private nursing home where I can buy absolute confidentiality. They will arrange the adoption for us – and a very suitable one I know it will be. And we will simply tell all those people you mention that the baby did not survive.'

She gasped then and simultaneously the child kicked within her.

‘It happens, doesn't it?' he went on. ‘ Babies are stillborn, or survive only a matter of days. No one would question you too closely. They would be too afraid of upsetting you. It would work, Dinah. It has to work. Then we can simply get on with our lives.'

It was a nightmare; she felt she was being strangled by the tentacles of some gigantic sea monster and eaten alive. To have thought she was safe – and then to be given this terrible ultimatum!

Yet had she thought she was safe? In the beginning, maybe, but lately … no. She had sensed Van's revulsion and known the cause of it. And the knowledge had been a torment. It was too much to ask – too much to ask of any man, and particularly one like Van. Beneath that totally confident exterior lay an Achilles' heel, some insecurity she did not understand. And though his rejection hurt her, yet still it was Van's feelings that were most important to her, more than the baby's, more than her own, more than anything in the world. She worshipped him, she adored him. He was her life: her past, her present and her future. She could not even contemplate losing him now – it was unthinkable. If to keep him she had to give up her baby she would do so. The choice, however painful, was already made.

Strangely, she did not blame him. Van was what he was – if he were not she would probably not love him. And at least, as he had said, he was honest about his feelings. Better that than to see him growing to hate the child that was being passed off as his own, better that than seeing their own relationship deteriorate beneath the pressures and the strains. No, she did not blame Van – typically, she blamed only herself. The imperfection was hers, her own irresponsibility was the root cause of the whole mess. She could not expect Van to pick up the pieces.

Except that he was going to. Not that he was going to put them back together exactly as she might have hoped, but at least he would make some sort of order out of chaos. If she let him play things his way all the burden would be lifted from her shoulders. Van would look after her. In the midst of her pain Dinah knew there was nothing that mattered to her more.

He was a beautiful baby. She saw him only once but she would never forget him. He had big blue eyes that seemed to gaze at her for a moment before closing contentedly, a button nose and soft rosebud mouth, and a mass of dark hair covering his slightly pointed head. She looked at him in wonder, lifting one tiny hand with its little pearly-pink nails and stroking it gently with her thumb. Then she held him close against her breast, breathing in the baby smell of him, loving the warm softness and suffused with a rush of tenderness that made her want to weep at the wonder of it.

She wished then that she could keep him, wished with all her heart that things could have been different. But it was too late now. All the arrangements were made – there could be no going back.

When they took him away she did not protest. She felt calm in a curiously fatalistic way, though her eyes were so full of tears she could scarcely see him properly. She had been told that a couple were already waiting for Stephen, as she had called him. They were delighted with him. But beyond that she knew nothing. Confidentiality was absolute. He had gone, she knew not where, only that he was loved and wanted very much. The knowledge was a sweet, poignant pain, a comfort and a life sentence.

When she was strong enough Van took her home and she had to endure the sympathy of those who thought that her baby had been stillborn. At times she had to struggle with herself not to cry out: ‘ He isn't dead at all – he isn't! He is alive and well!' But at other times it was easy, for she
was
grieving and Van's family and friends respected her silences and her tears and did not press her to talk when she wanted to be silent.

For a long while she thought the pain would never go away. She ached for her baby, an empty, searing sense of loss that throbbed in her breasts, full and tender in spite of the injections to stop the milk coming in, and pulled in the muscles of her retracting stomach. She stretched out her arms to the empty air as if to hold him, then wrapped them around herself, sobbing in an ecstasy of grief. At night she lay dry-eyed, staring into the darkness, longing for him, wanting to see him just once more. She tried to find the words to ask Van wasn't there please some way the decision could be reversed – couldn't he
please
get her baby back and accept him as his own? But the words remained unspoken. It was too late. She couldn't get him back. And even if she could it wouldn't work.

Gradually, the pain began to lessen and the terrible fits of depression came less often – though over the years they would never go away entirely.

There were other things to fill her life now. Van had found them a new home, a farmhouse which he was having renovated, and Dinah immersed herself in planning decor and choosing furniture. Their funds were far from unlimited – Van's salary was quite modest – but Dinah still had far more cash to play with than she had ever had before and she allowed her imagination full rein as she chose chintzes and wicker, soft natural shaded fabrics and warm unvarnished pine. Only when she came to decide upon the decor for the smallest bedroom did the blackness creep up on her again; this room would have been the nursery. She sat in the middle of the bare board floor, with the boughs of the old apple tree tapping softly against the window, and wept for the baby who would never grow up here, never know this house or her love.

When the decoration of the house was complete and they moved in, she was like a lost soul for a time. But not for long. Christian Senior was still proving stubborn about manufacturing the sandals and Van was becoming restless.

‘Bugger the old man – it's time to branch out on our own!' he said to Dinah.

‘Branch out – how?'

‘If he won't sanction expansion at his damned factory, we'll do it ourselves – here.'

‘
Where
here?' Dinah asked. A little pulse of excitement had begun deep inside her. There was something electrifying about Van in this positive, dynamic mood that stirred her own latent longing to express the ideas that were simmering away in the depths of her creative mind.

‘The old barn could be made into a workshop. The roof is sound; if I had lighting installed, some workbenches and a machine or two, we could make a start – on a small scale at least.'

‘With the sandals, you mean?'

‘Yes, and anything else you can manage to dream up. Accessories of some kind, perhaps. But not shoes. We don't want to tread too much on the old man's toes.'

Dinah giggled. ‘If he's wearing Kendricks' safety boots he'd never notice.'

Van frowned. A sense of humour did not number among his qualities.

‘I know he's refused to do anything that smacks of fashion but there's no point upsetting him. See what you can come up with.'

‘I'll think about it,' she said, feeling the excitement stir again, making her feel she was standing on the brink of a new and exhilarating adventure, and promising herself that the moment she was alone she would indulge in the almost forgotten luxury of giving free rein to her creative talent.

‘Good girl. Come here.'

Van held out his hand to her and she went to him, laying her head against his chest. It was so nice that things were right between them again.

Van seemed to have wiped Stephen from his mind; he never referred to him or his existence. Once or twice Dinah had mentioned him and seen Van's face change, darkening, clamming up.

‘It's over now,' he said. ‘Best just forget it.'

Dinah knew she could not forget so easily but the sense of loss made her all the more desperate for Van's love and approval.

The revulsion he had felt when she was pregnant seemed to have gone now; they made love often and he was teaching her to enjoy every aspect of physical contact. But though she was a willing pupil his previous rejection of her had gone deep and she could not shake free of the fear that one day he might reject her again. Had it been the fact that the baby was not his that had made him turn away from her in disgust – or had it been the altered shape of her body? Suppose he should feel the same when the time came for them to start a family? She couldn't bear to go through it all over again – and certainly Van had not mentioned trying for a baby of their own. Dinah prayed that she would not become pregnant again by accident, and so far her prayers had been answered.

But her insecurity went even deeper. It was a darkness inside her that she could not explain, unless it was that she had lost Van once and so she might lose him again. Close as they were, and deeply in love, there was a part of him she could not reach and knew she would never possess.

When Van asked her to suggest some more ideas for what he thought of as his pet project it seemed to Dinah not only an exciting challenge but also a wonderful opportunity to impress him with her skills and show him that she was not just a foolish girl who had managed to get herself into trouble. The ideas she had had for the footwear factory had been all very well, but they had been limited to the criteria of fitting in with existing production methods and tailored to appeal to Christian Senior. The walking boots were already doing very well in the markets to which they had been introduced, but they were still boots for all that, and hardly inspiring, and the riding boots had never got off the ground at all. As for the ‘Bible sandals', though she was quite pleased with the concept, it was not what she would have chosen to design.

Now Van had suggested accessories and the word opened up a whole new world to her. Accessories was certainly something she could be enthusiastic about – a wide range to give full scope to her skills.

There were still limits to be observed, of course. She couldn't come up with anything too complicated or complex – they simply did not have the facilities to produce anything beyond the most simple, for there would be room for perhaps only one cutting table and one or two machines at most – but Dinah did not mind that. She had always preferred the classically simple, her taste was for something she had never before been able to indulge – quality, with a hint of the original. Now, carefully bearing in mind that to begin with at least she and Van would have to make up anything she designed themselves, Dinah began her search for ideas.