Splintered Lives (41 page)

“Me too,” Susan replied.
 
Let’s go home to the flat.”

They linked arms and their steps matched and rhymed as they quickly walked home.

Susan opened the door and James was charmed by the look and the perfume of the place.

They fell into each other’s arms and they spent the whole weekend loving, sleeping and occasionally making meals, when they were starving.

 
James and Susan married on James’s following leave when they spent their honeymoon on the beautiful
island
of
Kefalonia
in a villa on the outskirts of a village.
 
It was an ideal time for the two of them.
 
The couple settled down to married life and were delighted when James got a home posting at a training camp in the North East.
 
Susan was delighted with the accommodation because

James was high up in command, which brought with it many advantages.

 
Susan and James had a wonderful loving relationship.
 
His parents adored her and her parents opened their arms to James and made him a part of their family. After three years Susan and James decided to start their own family but they were unsuccessful.
 
After using various techniques nothing happened and Susan began to fret.
 
James comforted her and they went to see a doctor for them both to have tests.
 
The hospital found something amiss in Susan’s tests and she was diagnosed with neuron motor disease.
 
James was devastated and he kept the seriousness of her illness from Susan.
 

Susan began to feel muscle weakness and she was always dropping things that she could not retrieve.
 
When she walked any distance, perspiration poured off her and she felt very weak.
 
She tried to keep her weaknesses from James but he knew they had not much time together.
 
He tried to give Susan a good life whilst she was able to do things.
 
They would holiday in the sun and they would dance together to slow dreamy music, holding each other close.
 
He would float her in the warm sea and see her delight, the tension flowing out of her lovely face as she enjoyed the warmth of the sun on her body.
 
James suffered as he watched her deteriorate, although she was fighting with all her will to stay.

After her great fight for her life she died at the age of thirty-two and James never wanted another relationship.
 
His love for her sustained him and he volunteered for overseas battlefield hospital time.
 
He had not felt anything for any other woman for fifteen years.
 
When his army time was over and he was given a pension after twenty-five years, he volunteered for work in the third world thus bringing him to work in Pokhara.

TAZ

Chapter 59

Taz was the youngest of the Menon family.
 
She was teased and spoilt by her two siblings, Taj and Sahida, and adored by her parents.
 
She was quite a handful of mischief and assertiveness in her teens but was devastated when her favourite sibling died in the plane crash.
 
She had thought she would make a good lawyer but when she saw the grief of her parents, she decided to become a doctor like her father and her dead brother.

Taz attended university in Delhi’s Medical school.
 
It was not easy then for females to become doctors but the training she had with her father held her in good stead.
 
She was a popular student and made many friends.
 
She was also flirty with the boys, feeling her freedom from home and loving the attention.

Liam was a fellow student but older, a post-graduate, studying a Ph.D. in tropical diseases.
 
He was Irish, very handsome with fair hair and green eyes.
 
Taz fell for him.
 
He was part of her lecture team and seemed exotic to her.

Liam was a happy-go – lucky guy who had lots of his students falling for him.
 
Taz was determined to catch his eye and she did all she could to be near to him.
 
It was a girlish crush but she had never met anyone like him before and she did all she could to be near to him.
 
She maneuvered a seat beside him in the canteen and a friendship flowered from his sense of humour and her easy wit. He asked her out on a date and things heated up as an attraction sprung up between them.

Liam had many friends amongst the post-graduate minority and made them his priority.
 
He had more in common with them than the larger majority of younger students.

Taz attended Liam’s every lecture, trying every time to catch his eye.
 
They began to date regularly at her instigation.
 
She had serious feelings for him, but for Liam, it was just a bit of fun.

He arranged a weekend away in one of the better hotels in Delhi and wined and dined Taz.
 
He took her sightseeing, visiting the garden where Ghandi’s light still burns at his remembrance sight.
 
They strolled around, hand in hand, and Taz felt engrossed by the attractive, lovely Irishman.
 
When, however, they returned to the hotel, Taz found that only one room had been booked.
 
She was very nervous and she had no intention of sleeping with Liam.
 
She had never been with a man before.
 
She was eighteen and he was twenty-eight, she had trusted him.
 
He took her to the room whilst she protested, shoving her roughly on to the bed.
 
He took her quickly without any foreplay and ripped her causing her to scream out in pain.
 
He dressed quickly and left her crying in fear as she saw the blood on the sheets and felt a rush of shame.
 
She had been raped.
 
What could she do?
 
She lay on the bed feeling torn apart and wondering what had happened to her.
 
She knew she had made moves towards him but in her innocence she had not expected what had happened, his lack of care for her, his quick and angry display of disdain as he left her crying on the rumpled bed.

She had no close friend she could turn to.
 
She knew she would have to get back to her classes and hide her feelings of her utter lack of self-esteem.
 
She would have to face up to seeing Liam in class, and live with the contempt he had for her.
 
She made a secret of her rape and decided she would live a life without a man in it.

She survived the rest of her university days by working hard and when she became a doctor, she returned to her parents and worked with her father.

Until she met James
   

Chapter 60

Rashi left and James was back on his rounds with Taz, who had missed James’s easy-going ways and had felt uncomfortable with Rashi’s adoration of her.
 
He was like a puppy, showing her how pleased he was when she was around.
 
James’s time was up but he volunteered for another spell.
 
He decided to move into a flat in Kathmandu where he could settle and feel at home, for the time he would be working there.
 
Taz was pleased because she trusted him with her patients.
 
She did not have to check his treatment of the villagers as she had to do with Rashi.
 

The easy friendship renewed itself as the pair worked the village clinics together.

James thought Taz to be a very attractive woman and Taz found James to be a caring, charming man.

There was an attraction growing between them, just as strong on both sides.
 
They had never spoken of their previous lives, but one evening when Taz had been invited to visit James in his new home, he felt he should tell her about Susan.

It was fifteen years since she had died and he remembered the wonderful life they had together and felt ready to commit again now to Taz.
 
When James told her his sad story, she looked at him with comprehension of his care and kindness and she knew he would not use her as Liam had done.

When it was Taz’s turn to confess her secret, she felt the shame of it, all over again.
 
James was horrified when Taz told him of her only experience with a man.
   

James held her as she shivered and remembered the utter self-contempt she felt.
 
She had not told another living soul, not her parents, not her sister, nobody until now.
 
James felt honoured that she trusted him enough to have told him and he held her close as he gently comforted her.

 
“Not all men are like that, Susan and I had a mutual loving relationship that helped to sustain us at the end of our life together.
 
The closeness we felt for each other helped me to continue my life.”
 
James said.

James turned her face towards him and gently kissed her on her lips.

“I don’t want you to be afraid of me.
 
I would never hurt you.
 
I will teach you the love you should have had.”
 
Taz feels her heart beat faster as James gently kisses her again.

Chapter
 
61

Simon’s grandfather was waiting at Kathmandu airport to take his family, Sahida , Mark, Simon, Mula and little Taj, home for a meal and a night’s sleep before their onwards journey the next day, back home to Pokhara.
 
He felt that he was participating in little Taj’s life, having had no contact with his father’s until he was well into his teens.

He was reliving the time with his own son, Taj, as well as the time he could have had with Simon, his grandson, as a little boy.

Mrs. Menon, Taz and James were waiting with a meal and a welcome home.
 
James was holding Taz by the waist and they were beaming happily as the travelers returned.

“Hey! What’s this about?”
 
Sahida asked her sister.

“James and I are engaged.”
 
Taz told them.

“Well, so are Mark and I.”
 
Sahida replied.

“Well, this needs to be celebrated.” Dr Menon said. “The homecoming, the engagements of my two daughters and the return of little Taj to our home.”

A double wedding was arranged to take place in the spring and Sarah and David, Katie and Stan, Mary and Joe, along with the beloved Charlie, were invited.

Although Charlie was ninety, he was well and determined to make the long journey, to see where Simon and all the family lived.
 
The Nepalese scenery seared Charlie’s heart, lifting his spirit, as he had never felt so close to nature in all his life.
 
The road journey to Pokhara, he felt was the best he had ever taken.
 
Sahida and Mark accommodated Mark’s mother and dad, in the house they shared. Simon and Mula had made preparations for Sarah, David and Charlie to stay with them.
 
Mula loved Charlie because he reminded her of the times she spent with her grandfather, in the hills above Kathmandu.
 
She would sit with him and hold onto his hand as she smiled shyly and Charlie’s eyes crinkled with humour and laughter. Taj followed Charlie about, pulling him by his hand, to show him the garden and pointing to the white peaks above them.
 
Charlie was in his element and felt his life was back to the days when Simon and Anne were small children, demanding his attention all the time.
 
He remembered how they had filled his days, taking the loneliness of the loss of his wife, a little at a time, until his life was full again with the children of his son.
 
He missed Amy and he wondered how she would feel about his life now, he was sure that she would have loved it here, with this family and this scenery.
 
When David was working as a civil engineer, she was thrilled to go on holiday to where his project was being completed, and see her son after months of his absence.
 
Charlie pondered on his life, being forever grateful for his son and his extended family.
  
Taj would not have a splintered life as Sarah and Simon had had, he was here where he should be and when he is older, he will be able to include his grandparents in to his life.