A Perfect Marriage (27 page)

"You're looking great."

"Like this?" She looked down.

"Max said it's like watching a rose come into full bloom." Staring, Celine flushed. "M-Max said that?"

"Why so surprised? I gather he can hardly keep away from you." It was almost a question.

"From the baby," Celine said feebly. "He ... he doesn't want to touch me, Nancy."

Nancy frowned. "Doesn't want to, or doesn't dare?" she asked bluntly. "Have you ever asked him? Or encouraged him to?"

"And set myself up for a brush-off?" Celine asked.
"No, thanks."
Not again.

Nancy regarded her thoughtfully. "It's understandable. Have you two... talked?"

Celine avoided her steady gaze. "We talk all the time," she mumbled.
"Quite a lot."

"I mean, really talked.
About your relationship.
About what
happened.
"

Celine shook her head. "He hasn't got over her, Nancy. Maybe he never will." She paused,
then
asked, "Has he talked to you?"

"Max is past the age of confiding in his mother. Never did, much, come to think of it. He always tended to bottle things up, even as a child. I don't know what's going on in his head-or his heart-these days." Nancy sighed. "I only know he's not happy."

That was obvious. "I know. Perhaps the baby will help."

"Perhaps it will help you both." Nancy leaned over and patted her hand. "I'd like to see you two together again, properly."

·
       
* *

"I should tell you, Celine," Max said that evening as they sat in the kitchen, "I won't be with the firm much longer." "You're leaving?" For once she was surprised into look ing directly at him.

"I've decided to set up my own practice. I've found an office downtown and I'm moving in next week." He seemed to be thinking something over. "I wondered,"
he
said fi nally, "if you'd be interested in advising on the furnish ings, perhaps some pictures. It's new, but very bare, very bland. I'll pay you, of course.
"
     
,

"I can't take payment from you! But I'd like to see it."

Was he leaving to spare himself from seeing Kate every day?

Fleetingly Celine wondered if the girl had taken up with someone else from the firm. That would be rubbing salt into Max's wounds.

"We could go down there tomorrow, if you like," Max offered. "I'll pick you up at lunchtime so you can see the place in daylight.
Unless you've got something else to do?"
"Lunchtime's fine."

"We could have lunch afterwards in town. Okay?" His smile was almost anxious. "That would be ... nice."

She dressed carefully next day in her prettiest maternity dress, a soft dark blue, and when the doorbell rang she was applying perfume to her skin. Inspecting herself critically in the mirror she saw that her skin had a new bloom on it and her freshly washed hair shone. She must be one of those lucky women whom pregnancy suited.

Max glanced over her with evident approval but didn't comment as he opened the car door for her.

The office was spacious but as he'd said,
bare
and uninteresting. Celine looked about, made some preliminary suggestions and scribbled a few notes in a small book.

"You know my taste," Max told her. "I'll give you a free hand within my budget."

"You'd better come with me to choose your desk and chair," she suggested. "I think I know the best place to go

  
 
for
office furniture." That was something she'd learned from working for Roland.

"Sure," Max said. "Is it okay for you to be doing this? I don't want you doing anything you shouldn't." He glanced at her figure.

"It won't do me any harm. I'm not going to lift anything myself, just do the choosing."

"What about driving? I can take you wherever you need to go."

Celine shook her head. "That's not a problem. I need to put the seat back a bit further than I'm used to, that's all. Don't coddle me, Max."

He smiled and shrugged. "Okay, I'll try not to. But you must tell me if you need anything. Now-" he glanced at his watch "-there's a table waiting for us at the Southern Cross restaurant."

The table overlooked the harbour, where even on a wintry weekday some yachts had braved the elements, and a pale sun shone over the green-blue sea. The gentle slope of the island volcano, Rangitoto, obscured the horizon, and a huge passenger catamaran ploughed across the water on its way from the further island of Waiheke to the ferry terminal at the bottom of Queen Street, the heart of the city.

"Are you allowed champagne?" Max asked her as he took the wine list from the waiter.

"Maybe one glass," Celine said cautiously. "What are we celebrating?
Your move to your own practice?"

"Among other things."
He ordered a sparkling New Zealand wine, and when it came he said, "Let's drink to the baby, and ... to whatever the future holds for us."

She could do that, she supposed. "And your new practice." Raising her glass, she looked up into his eyes and saw that they were dark and sombre.

She tasted the wine and set it down, staring at the tiny bubbles rising in the fluted glass.

Max put down his glass and opened the menu. "What would you like to eat?"

 
When he left her back at the house after their leisurely lunch, he feathered a fleeting kiss across her cheek before turning away and striding back to his car.

Celine entered the house in something of a daze, to hear the phone ringing. Hurrying across the hall, she picked up the receiver. "Hello?"

"Celine-you sound puffed. Did I make you run?"

"Honoria!
No, not really. Anything makes me puff these days
: '

"You're not that old!"

"Not old-pregnant."

There was a long pause at the other end. "Pregnant? Pregnant! That's wonderful! Isn't it? I mean ...how- who? Last time we met you said Max had left. I take it this is not a virgin birth."

"It's a long story, Honoria
: "

"But I'm dying of curiosity now!
How about lunch tomorrow at my place?"

"Well... all right." She could do some preliminary scouting round for furnishings for Max's office, perhaps gather some samples and catalogues, and then lunch with Honoria. In the afternoon if she wasn't too tired she could spend some time in her workroom sorting and planning. "What time, then?" she queried.

"How about twelve-thirty?
And you've got to tell me all about it!"

She wouldn't be telling the whole story, Celine thought as she put down the phone five minutes later. But she didn't want Honoria getting the wrong idea.

She edited out some of the details, but ended up telling Honoria a good deal more than she'd intended. Perhaps she'd needed someone to confide in. Most of their close friends had some connection with Max's job or family or were people they'd both known since childhood. Only Honoria and Tom were outside that circle.

"And now he's back in your life because of the baby?"

Honoria asked. "What about the bimbo?" Celine gave a faint smile. "He says it's over." "Do you believe him?"

"Honoria, he's shattered. He tries to hide it, but I can see he's hurting."

Honoria put down the coffee cup in her hand and gave her a long, disbelieving stare. "Celine, are you sorry for the guy
? "

"I know how it feels," Celine confessed. "I wouldn't wish that kind of pain on anyone."

"You are too soft!" Honoria told her scornfully. "I made Tom crawl for bloody weeks! What are you going to do? Open your arms and say, `Come home, darling-all is forgiven'?"

Celine gave a choked little laugh. "I've too much pride for that. And yet, if he ever wants it, I shouldn't let pride get in the way of... of
a reconciliation
, should I?"

"Why not?
You're entitled. The rat lit out on you, remember?
Left you high and dry."

"I know but-Max isn't a rat. He's a man who has a very strong sense of-of honour. That's why he couldn't lie to me and go on having an affair behind my back. It's why he's trying to do the right thing by the baby. By me, too, I suppose. And that's what I find so damned unacceptable. What I want is for him to feel the same way about me as he does about her. And that's crying for the moon."

Honoria said thoughtfully, "Correct me if I'm wrong, but you know, even on your honeymoon, you two didn't strike me as being madly in love. A couple of nice, down-to-earth kids, really fond of each other but-well, if there were stars in your eyes, I couldn't see them."

"You were right," Celine told her. "That's what was missing, what we thought we could do without. We were wrong, and Max realised it when he met Kate. I guess now it's too late for us."

"When did you realise it?" Honoria asked shrewdly.

 
Celine was silent for a while. "Not until he'd left me," she acknowledged. "And now I can't be satisfied with less. I guess that's pretty stupid."

"Not stupid. Tom and I started out with so many stars in our eyes we could barely see anything but each other. Then the kids came along, and life caught up with us, and we grew older-Tom got desperate, I got disillusioned. But you know
,
last week was our wedding anniversary. Tom bought me flowers and took me out to dinner, and I put on a pretty dress that I hadn't worn for ages. We talked. The sky was cloudy that night, but you know what? On our way home the stars came out. And I thought, yeah-sometimes you can't see them but the stars are always up there somewhere, aren't they?"

Max went shopping with her for his desk and office chair, and Celine chose curtain fabrics and the other furniture, presenting samples for his approval. She persuaded the curtain firm to do a rush job for him, and they both spent several hours the night before he opened for business arranging the furniture. All that remained was to empty the boxes stacked in one corner and place their contents on shelves and in filing cabinets.

"You don't need to do this," Max told her when she offered to help with that task. "Anyway, you shouldn't be lifting."

"Books and files!
They're not heavy," Celine protested.
"At least, not one by one.
I can hand them to you, and then you can put them where they belong. Come on, the sooner we start, the sooner we'll finish." She knelt and began to strip the sealing tape from the first carton.

It was almost like being back in the days when they'd been planning the house together. Sometimes she almost forgot that they were living apart.
Except that every night she returned to an empty, lonely house.

There had been a brief argument when Max asked her to present a bill for her work. At first she'd flatly refused to take money from him, but Max was at least as stubborn as

  
 
she
, and finally she'd said, "All right, I'll send you an account-"

"Good!"

"And I'll give the money to the Red Cross."

His eyes narrowed briefly,
then
he gave a short laugh. ', "You can do what you like with the money, of course," he said. "Can you afford to do that?" She'd finally persuaded him that she didn't need his help to pay her household expenses.

"Yes," she said crisply. The truth was that she had no further commissions in the offing, and had begun thinking of ways to trim her budget. Perhaps by dispensing with AI- ' ice's services; with only Celine in the house it scarcely needed so much cleaning.

"You might pass the word that I'm available for
more ;
work," she suggested. "I'm doing quite well, but word-ofmouth is the best advertising. I've had some cards printed- ' perhaps you can leave some in the reception area for me. Anyone who likes your decor might think of giving me a call."

"You don't want to take on too much," Max said
, ,
frowning.

"I want to make it my living," she explained.

"You mean work full-time?" The frown deepened. "You can't do that!"

Celine lifted her brows. "Can't?"
  
'

"Shouldn't!"
Max amended. "You're expecting a baby."

Glancing down, Celine said, "I know. It doesn't mean I can't work. Most women do, these days, right up to the ninth month sometimes."

"You're not most mothers. You know you're at more risk than a younger woman."

"Very slightly," Celine agreed. "As long as I feel well and don't get too tired, my doctor is quite happy."

"Well, I'm not! There's no need for you to be working at all. You know I can afford to look after you adequately."

"I don't want you to," Celine told him. She needed to do all she could to forge a real career for herself and be as
in ,
 
dependent as possible before the baby arrived. Afterwards she'd have to fit her work around the baby's needs, of course. But she wasn't going to get into the habit of relying on Max.

"It's my child, too!" Max said. "I'm simply trying to protect it. And you."

"I promise," Celine assured him, "if the doctor advises me to stop working, I will. Okay?"

"Will you also promise to be honest with him?" Max demanded.
"And to ask for my help if you need it?"

"All right."
She sighed. "For the baby's sake, I promise. I wouldn't do anything to harm it, Max. Surely you can trust me on that?"

Celine had found a new serenity that she deduced was the result of her being pregnant. She refused to speculate on Max's motives or let herself think too far ahead. Both hurt and anger seemed emotions that were scarcely worth expending emotion on, and she floated through the days with her attention increasingly focused on the miracle within her body. Sometimes she felt that everything must finally resolve itself without any help from her. So what was the point of anguishing about it? And if, when this was all over, she didn't have Max, at least she'd have his child to lavish her love and care on. She didn't want to think further than that.