The Healing Stream (27 page)

With her chin high, she turned and faced him, schooling her expression not to give her away. ‘What is it you have to tell me? Is it some excitement happening in your life?’

‘I hope that it may be so. I have never said anything like this to anyone and I do not know the right words. But my heart is so full that I beg you to hear me and – oh but I am saying it wrong. Help me, Deirdre, surely you must understand what it is I am trying to tell you.’

She shook her head, torn between a wild and wonderful hope, an unbearable dread that he knew she was in love with him and didn’t want to hurt her, and the anguish of knowing no man would ever see her as anything more than someone to be kind to. Misery overwhelmed her. It took all her courage to speak firmly.

‘Is it that you are telling me there is a girl you are in love with?’ There! She’d said it! She’d made it easy for him to tell her.

‘Yes there is a girl, the most beautiful, precious girl. Deirdre, darling Deirdre, I am speaking this so badly. Do you not see how much I care for you? I did not know I could feel as I do for any girl, even one as lovely as you. But why are there tears? If you cannot feel for me as I want, then it is for me to weep.’

‘. . . so happy. Timus, I do love you. I think of you all the time. But how can you love me like men love women – I can’t even walk.’

‘I have two good legs and two strong arms. Always I will carry you with pride. There is more to living than walking. Say again as you did just now, tell me again that you love me too and that you will take me for husband.’

‘I love you more than any words can say.’ She made a valiant effort to speak without choking on her words then, feeling in her skirt pocket for her handkerchief she blew her nose and mopped away her tears. ‘When we are together I forget that I’m not the
me
I used to be. No, that’s not right. I’m
not
the
me
I used to be before the accident. Then, I was just playing at being a proper grown-up person with grown-up emotions. But it’s not just me, Timus; what will your family say if you tell them you want to marry a girl who can’t run a home or look after children? That’s what family life is about; you only have to look at your mother. She is wonderful.’

‘And you are wonderful. Children! Just picture it, Deirdre,
our
children. You ask about my family. Yes, they know I want you to be my wife and they are more pleased than I know words. They are most fond of you. They look forward most eagerly to the time you become part of our family. That is the way we live when we take a wife.’ Then with the wide smile she loved, ‘My parents have a most large house so that their sons and their wives and children are all one family. Will you mind that? Will you think that as a married person you should have a home just for your own?’ She shook her head, her mind filled with images of the Rodriguez house, the bustle of activity, the laughter. And seeing her expression he went on, ‘If you agree for you and me to become a married two, the thing I want – want more than I know in your language to tell – then they make . . . make . . .’ And here he was lost for the right word so he held his hands apart, first one way and then the other, as if he were making a square and then moving them wider while he looked at her helplessly. ‘So that we have a place to be. They will give us what you name to be the drawing room – I do not know why, for it is not for drawing – to be our bedroom so that we do not have to go up the stairs each night. Easily I could carry you, but my mother is a wise woman and it was she who say we should stay below so that you could do it for yourself.’

A new spirit of confidence flooded over Deirdre. The future had no clouds. She was going to be part of that caring and carefree family; she was going to be Mrs Timus Rodriguez.

‘Marry Timus?’ Tessa looked at Naomi in astonishment when they met by chance in Llaibir the next morning. ‘I know she spends a lot of time with his family, but I never guessed. I’m so pleased for her – and for Timus too. So will Giles be when I tell him.’ She made sure there was excitement in the way she spoke; Naomi was perceptive and she mustn’t have the chance to suspect the nagging uncertainty that Tessa couldn’t escape. Just thinking about it gave her a sick feeling of fear. Was he bored with her, just as he was bored with life at el Almendros? For weeks he had been different – ever since his last trip to London. Sometimes he would sit with the paper in front of him, yet she knew he wasn’t reading; his solitary walks were becoming more frequent; he shut himself in his study for hours and yet when evening came there were never many pages to be typed. She pulled her thoughts back on to track and set a smile of interest on her face. She would drive Deirdre in the hybrid to look for clothes. They would share the excitement and fun just like they used to on their outings from Fiddlers’ Green – or so she tried to make herself believe. But in those days their joy in the moment had been forced, for in both their minds had been the knowledge that, whatever Deirdre bought to wear, nothing could alter her wheelchair-bound life. Yet now, wheelchair or not, she was the girl handsome, kindly, charming Timus wanted for his wife.

‘It’s marvellous,’ Tessa said, unable to keep her face from smiling. ‘All the times I’ve seen them together and I didn’t guess! Imagine all the work that’s been done on Landera and now she won’t be living there. Or will she? Are they going to move in with you and Julian?’ She still felt uncomfortable calling him by his Christian name but Mr Masters was too formal and Uncle seemed ridiculous.

‘They will live with his family. The idea seems to appeal to Deirdre. Well, she spends time a’plenty with them. It seems they are to have the largest downstairs room for their bedroom and Mr Rodriguez is having it partitioned to make an en suite bathroom. I can see now why she has been so difficult to live with, moody, ready to find fault. Poor little soul, she must have been frightened even to let herself dream.’ For a moment she gazed speculatively at Tessa. ‘Tell me to mind my own business, but I ask because I care, not because I’m playing the interfering aunt. Tessa, are things all right with you and Giles? Is he quite well? Tell me it’s not my business, but I met him at the post office the other day and he didn’t seem himself. He can’t still be suffering from writer’s block or whatever you called it.’ And was it her imagination or did Tessa look scared, trapped? Just for a second before she had control of the situation.

‘Poor Giles,’ she answered, careful to sound cheerfully casual, ‘he really doesn’t seem able to settle here for any length of time. Until we married he used to escape here when he’d had enough of the high life, but he’ll never make a countryman. He stays because he knows I love it, and he knows too that nowhere would be right for him for too long at a time. The truth is, he is a rolling stone. Sometimes I can feel he’s champing at the bit for pastures new. But as for his health, I’m sure he’s fine.’

‘If that’s all it is, that’s OK. He just seems to have lost his sparkle.’

‘He’ll go trotting off again soon I expect and the sparkle will be there for the London crowd. It’s like a drug to him. But it soon wears off. It sounds silly, but I’m glad when he goes away because I know how quickly it palls; I know he’ll soon be back with all his batteries charged. That’s the way he is, Auntie. And I wouldn’t change a thing about him.’ Was that the truth? She’d been wildly infatuated by him from the first, believing what she’d felt had been love. From that infatuation had become love, love that filled her heart and mind even more fully than had the original hero worship. And now she had her own challenge. Each week she became more deeply immersed in the work. She knew it didn’t interest Giles, but surely he must be proud of what she was accomplishing.

With the first day of her second nut harvest ahead of her, Tessa was anxious to get on. ‘I promised to pick up the mail,’ she told Naomi, ‘Are you coming the same way?’

At the post office they parted company and five minutes later Tessa was driving home, her thoughts ahead of her as she envisaged the trees giving up what looked like a splendid crop. There was no post for her, and she had expected none. But there was an envelope for Giles that she recognized as coming from his publisher. It might be important, so she decided to break the rules and take it to his study where she imagined he was dictating what tonight she would type. Instead he was gazing into space, his mind a million miles away and with something in his expression that frightened her.

‘Giles! Sorry to burst in on you, but this was in the post. I’m off to start harvesting. Bye.’ And with that she closed the door on him and looked in on Maria to collect Millie.

‘Leave her with me, Señora. We are happy.’

‘Thanks, Maria. If she’s a problem bring her down to me.’

‘She could never be a problem. I sing as I work; she dances. We are partners.’

Their brief exchange was in Spanish but, speaking English, Tessa told Millie to be good and do as Maria told her. Her instructions were met with a puzzled look. There were moments when Millie wanted nothing more than to help her mother; but there were other times when the atmosphere of the large kitchen, the sound of Maria singing, her ever-ready laugh and words of encouragement, were the only world the child asked. Before Tessa crossed the hall to the front door the singing had started again and from the thuds she heard she knew that Millie was leaping into dancing mode. Tessa smiled, imagining the scene: Maria was cleaning the windows, her movements in time with the music she made and, no doubt, as Millie leaped and thumped she too thought she was in time. No one would ever make a dancer of her, nor yet give her any natural grace. A silent voice suggested to Tessa that it was the lack of it that held Giles away from her, but she wouldn’t let herself dwell on the thought. Instead her mind moved back to what Naomi had asked: was anything wrong with Giles? She had been certain there was nothing more than that he was bored and probably resented the happiness she found in the simple life they led. But it hadn’t looked like boredom on his expression when she had caught him unawares in his study.

Reaching the five-acre plot where the nets were already spread around the lower trees it was as if she became a different person. Phillipe Rodriguez was already working his way along the bottom row of trees, leaving a shower of nuts on the ground as he moved from one to the next. Taking a large round basket from the shed, she set it on the ground by the first tree and started to gather up the nuts. As she worked she sang softly (not full volume as Maria did) hardly aware that she did it. It was one of life’s special moments: the hot sun on her back, the deep blue of the cloudless sky above, the sound of a tractor passing along the seldom-used road, a tractor pulling a trailer taking nuts from some grower further along the empty road to the cooperative depot. Rather than feeling like a novice at the game, she was filled with pride that nuts grown in the grove of Finca el Almendros (home of Giles Lampton, she conceded with a mixture of pride and annoyance) wouldn’t be taken to the cooperative but would be weighed and packed by
her
and sent independently to fill her orders.

When she saw Giles hurrying down the sloping drive to the growing area by the road her happiness was complete. Never had he sought her out down there, although she always hoped that he would. One look at his face told her that he had something special to tell her; this was the Giles she had first fallen in love with: vital, interested in life. In his hand he held the letter she had taken in to him.

Tessa watched Giles packing. Was it only in her imagination that she didn’t exist for him? Suddenly his life had colour and purpose, purpose in which she played no part.

‘How long do you think you’ll be away?’ she asked. He seemed not to hear her, his mind taken with selecting which suits to fold carefully for the largest of the three cases he had put out ready. ‘An evening suit? I thought this was a working trip?’ She tried to tease him into at least noticing she was there.

‘That’s what I intend it to be. But I’m sure there will be occasions when I need to dress. I don’t care how sociable I have to make myself; I’ll fight all the way to see my work isn’t ruined. Based on books by Giles Lampton, screenplay written by whoever it is, and then they have a free hand to make what he will of my characters.’ He sounded bitter, even angry. ‘I have to be there. I want a say in who is to be cast. What will they know of the characters in an English village?’

‘People may not be so different in America.’

‘What?’ Clearly he had simply been voicing his thoughts aloud, not talking to her. ‘The same? How can they be? We are all as circumstances have made us. We may learn to understand each other, but we’re certainly not the same. Ties . . . about eight, I should think . . . Put socks and underwear in the smallest case of the three for me, will you?’

She got off the bed where she had been sitting and went to his chest of drawers. But she still hadn’t had an answer to her original question.

‘You’re packing more than you take when you go to London. Do you expect to be away longer than usual?’

‘I’ve no idea how long I shall be.’ Suddenly she had his full attention and something in his expression made her wish she hadn’t pressed him for an answer. ‘I intend to stay as long as it takes to make sure my work doesn’t end up as some fast-moving action-packed ninety minutes of screen entertainment.’ He hesitated. She wished he wouldn’t look at her like that – as if she were some sort of problem he wasn’t sure how to solve. Not a word that he would get home as soon as he could or that he would miss her. ‘You know I’m restless, frustrated, cooped up here with just you and the child – and Maria’s constant voice.’

His tone took her by surprise.

‘Well you needn’t hurry on my account,’ she retorted, hating herself for wanting to hurt him. ‘I have plenty of interests. I shall be too busy to even notice you’ve gone.’

Packing was forgotten as they held each other’s gaze across the bed. What were they doing? Hadn’t she told Naomi how she liked him to go away because it helped him see the preciousness of what they shared here? But was it precious to him, or did he come home because he got bored with what he found somewhere else? Ever since his last visit to London he had been different. Most of the time lately he’d wanted no company but his own, and there was even something different in their love-making. It used to be an exciting adventure, rapturously uniting them. But lately she was sure he feigned sleep when he was actually wide awake. Sure that whatever was wrong between them could be put right if they found each other in the ultimate joy of loving, sometimes she tried to arouse him. If his body responded there was none of the former lingering joy of anticipation; instead he would move on to her, unable to restrain his quick movements and almost immediately it was over. It wasn’t love, it was simply satisfying his sexual desire so that he could escape into sleep leaving her frustrated and resentful.