The Hidden Years (43 page)

'We went to the South of France for four
months… When I came back your mother was already married to
John Ryan, with a child on the way, or so the gossips had it.

'I realised then how much I loved her. I was searingly,
bitterly jealous. I think I almost hated her for giving herself to
someone else.

'I didn't ask for the details of how she had met him, of
who he was… I only found out later that your grandfather had
been completely opposed to the marriage, that he had only given his
permission when Megan told him that she was pregnant. He vowed never to
speak to her again as long as he lived. He was that kind of man; very
strict, very stern, and Megan was his favourite child… Over
the years I heard occasional reports about your mother. I tried not to
listen. I couldn't endure the thought of her happiness with someone
else. Time softens some pains but it can't extinguish them entirely.
And then Nora died and your father… I walked into your
grandmother's kitchen, saw your mother, and knew I had never stopped
loving her.'

'But she looked so afraid of you…'

'Not of me, Danny,' Robert told him gently. 'What she was
afraid of was that I would look at you and see that you were not John
Ryan's son but mine.'

Daniel felt the room spin round him. He must have made a
sound because Robert's hand gripped his shoulder, his voice raw with
emotion as he offered, 'I'm sorry, son…it's a shock for you,
I know…it was a shock for me as well, to learn that your
mother had suffered years of desperate unhappiness to protect me, that
she had married John Ryan because she was carrying my child…
Because she knew the scandal would destroy me… I like to
think that if I had known I'd have done the right thing, divorced Nora
and married your mother. I'd certainly have wanted to, but, as your
mother says, how could I have deserted poor Nora? And yet when I think
of how much your mother has suffered, how much you've
suffered… but you are my son, Daniel. There's nothing of
John Ryan in you… you're
my
son…'

Robert's son. He was still trying to assimilate the shock
of it, but strangely he felt no urge to deny it, no desperate inability
to believe what he had been told—rather it was as though
another burden was sliding from his shoulders with the knowledge that
he need never fear he would become a man in John Ryan's image of
violence and cruelty. And yet there was pain and confusion as well, the
pain of knowing that it had been for his sake that his mother had
suffered her marriage, the pain of realising that assumptions he had
made about himself and his heritage were totally false, that he was not
a Ryan…he was a Cavanagh and…a stranger to
himself.

'Don't think too badly of me, son. All of us at some times
in our lives do things we regret, act without thought or caution. My
deepest regret is the pain I've brought on your mother—that
she has had to carry the burden of my sin. The fact that I fathered her
child I consider to be one of the greatest achievements of my life, and
that that child is you, Danny, one of its greatest gifts. I don't ask
that you love me as your father—why should you? It's much
easier for me to love you as my son, but I
am
your father, and I swear to you now that there is nothing I wouldn't do
to spare your mother the slightest hurt, nothing…'

He was Robert's son…not John Ryan's but
Robert's. Not a Ryan but a Cavanagh… not half Irish and half
Welsh but entirely Welsh… As he lay in bed Daniel closed his
eyes, trying to come to terms with what he had learned, wondering
bleakly if he ever would.

It had
been while Daniel was at university, doing a postgraduate course in
civil engineering, that he'd first met Scott McLaren and, through him,
Sage.

He had already obtained his economics degree, a
commendable first, but several long summers spent working with Robert
had brought him to realise that, like it or not, and no matter how much
he might have fought against it initially, there was something about
the construction business that appealed to him.

'Must be in the blood,' was all Robert said when Daniel
told him that he had changed his mind and that he would like to go into
the business after all. They were closer now, not perhaps as father and
son in the way that Gareth and the twins were close, but certainly as
two men whose personalities melded well, and who had respect for one
another.

His decision to take the extra civil engineering course
was something he had discussed with Robert; Robert had recently been
expanding his business first into the commercial and from there into
the civil engineering sphere, and his plan was that ultimately Daniel
would take over the control of this arm of the business.

Now Daniel was in the first year of this extra
course— the only year he would actually spend at Alcester
before two more years of work experience combined with training. He was
a few years older than the majority of the students, with a maturity of
mind that skilfully allowed him to hide his deep inner vulnerabilities
and insecurities.

Although he could never regret that he was Robert's son
and not John Ryan's, there was still a small sore place inside him that
wouldn't heal, an illogical sense of betrayal and anger which he could
not rationalise away.

Because acknowledging its presence made him feel guilty
and uncomfortable he preferred to ignore it, to bury it very deeply
beneath the complex layers of knowledge and experience that went to
make up his personality.

During his first year at university he had had a very
intense and passionate relationship with a fellow student, but when she
had pressed for a long-term commitment he had found himself withdrawing
from her, unable to give it. Much as he desired her, he was, he
discovered, afraid of committing himself to her in case that commitment
made him vulnerable, in case he discovered that it was not him she
wanted after all but someone else.

Logically he knew that this fear sprang from knowing that
his mother had married John Ryan without loving him… and
while he could quite easily understand her motives, and even in many
ways admire her for what she had done, it had still left him with the
vague distrust of the female sex, an awareness of their duplicity and
man's inability to see it.

He and Scott belonged to the same debating society. It was
Scott's first term at university; the first time he had been away from
his home and family for any length of time, and he was, Daniel sensed,
homesick.

Very quickly Daniel heard all about the vast sheep station
run by Scott's father; the unexpected opportunity to take part in an
exchange scheme between his home university and this British one. How
he had been given the opportunity to take advantage of the scheme and
how his father had objected at first, but had eventually given way.

'I miss the old man, you know… There's only the
two of us—Mum died shortly after I was born. She was English.
Dad married her when he was over here doing a year's travelling.'

While Daniel rented a small terraced house in Alcester,
Scott was still living in one of the university halls.

Daniel never discovered exactly how Scott had first come
across Sage, and had always assumed that it must have been somewhere on
the campus. What he did know was that within a very short space of time
every single sentence Scott uttered seemed to contain the name 'Sage'.

He was three years older than Scott, and just cynical and
worldly enough to be slightly amused by the younger man's very obvious
devotion.

He hadn't met her yet, but when he did he suspected that
he would discover that this paragon of all the virtues would be just
another immature first-year female student, clad in the shrouding
uniform of long, droopy garments favoured by the majority of the female
student population. She would be thin and waiflike; Scott constantly
spoke of her in terms that suggested he considered her vulnerable and
fragile. She would have pale skin and kohl-rimmed eyes, and she would
be studying something arty and potentially useless.

When he actually did meet her it came as a shock to
discover how wrong he had been.

For a start, there was that wild banner of dark red hair
vibrantly flaunting itself in the still breeze of Alcester's High
Street, as Scott spotted him and dragged his obviously reluctant
companion over to introduce her.

When he shook her hand he discovered that her grip was
surprisingly strong, her fingers long and thin, her wrist supple. She
was taller than he had expected, too, only about four or five inches
shorter than Scott, who was an inch or so short of his own six feet
two, and she was not wearing droopy clothes.

Nor, he realised with some amusement, did she like him.
What he suspected was normally the feral stare of her extraordinary
eyes had been tamed to return his scrutiny, but quite obviously only
with a supreme effort, and it occurred to him to wonder what on earth
it was that ordered human fallibilities so disastrously, in causing
Scott, who was so placid, so organised, so insistent on order in all he
did, to fall in love with this obvious termagant of a girl, whose
nature, he suspected, was as unruly as her hair. Even her teeth were
sharp and challenging, the apparent softness of her full mouth
deceptive perhaps to the inexperienced eye which might see in it
compliance and gentleness. He knew better. She was no mate for Scott
and yet she plainly adored him.

Because he could see in her eyes that she wanted Scott to
herself, that she didn't want his company making up a threesome, he
said casually to Scott, 'I'm just on my way to the Crown. Why don't you
join me…?'

He could feel the anger she was directing to him without
having to look at her.

Scott, completely oblivious to it, responded eagerly,
'Great… Sage was just saying that she fancied a
drink…'

Sage… Daniel wondered how he managed not to
laugh. Whoever had thought up that name for her must have had good
cause to regret it over the years, or had they perhaps been hoping
against hope that the bestowal of such a name might go some way to
alleviate the burden of temperament fate had bestowed upon her?

She was certainly not to his taste, and he could only
marvel at Scott's blindness to what she really was.

He preferred his women smooth and sleek, blonde
preferably, with more than a hint of the cool refinement that came from
protected upper-middle-class backgrounds. The typical choice of the
street-wise kid from a working-class background, he frequently taunted
himself with derision, and yet to all intents and purposes he wasn't
that kid. He was the only son of a man whom even the serious heavy
papers were beginning to mention in their financial pages as one of the
decade's most successful and innovative developers. Robert was now a
millionaire, on paper at least, and outwardly if nothing else he,
Daniel, had all the trappings and advantages the son of such a man
could expect.

What had been left of his Liverpool accent had been
completely extinguished during his last two years at school; Robert
paid him well for the work he did for him during the summer, as well as
sending him abroad for several weeks at a time, ostensibly to see how
things were being done in other countries.

He had visited Germany and France, Spain, Italy, and, most
recently, America and Canada.

In addition to his grant Robert paid him a generous
allowance, and provided him with a car; the British racing green Morgan
Robert had given him for his twenty-first birthday to replace the one
he'd given him at seventeen was garaged safely at home and only used
during the summer months. Now, with them well into the autumn term,
Daniel was driving the small BMW which had originally been his
mother's, but which had been passed on to him when Robert had bought
her a new one.

All in all he was in a very fortunate position, but no
more fortunate than many of his fellow graduates. Alcester had a
growing reputation as a small but good university, not of Oxford's
standard, of course, and not for those destined to grace the computer
industry—for them there was Cambridge—but Alcester
was spoken of in academic circles as a university with more than its
fair share of upper- and upper-middle-class students.

No, there was no reason at all for him to feel either
guilty or uncomfortable about his financial security. Scott received a
very generous allowance from his father, and he expected that this girl
did too, for all that she was looking at him with all the contempt of a
newly converted communist for a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist.

'I really wanted a cup of coffee,' she was saying to Scott
now, holding on to his arm, and staring defiantly at Daniel.

Possessive as well as passionate, he reflected idly,
smiling back at her.

'The Crown serves coffee,' he assured her dulcetly,
pretending to be unaware of the real reason she had chosen to object to
his suggestion.

He could see that she was half inclined to argue, and was
cynically amused that she should have so little understanding of her
lover's temperament. Didn't she realise how much Scott liked peace and
harmony in his life? Of all men, he was the least likely to appreciate
the tantrums and fireworks which he guessed she was more than capable
of exhibiting.

He marvelled inwardly at her ignorance and self-conceit
that she should think that it was simply enough for her to love Scott
and for him to love her in return.

She was so arrogant, this untamed, tempestuous child who
looked at him with her angry defiant eyes that told him she wanted
Scott to herself. So arrogant and so potentially vulnerable. Couldn't
she see that ultimately Scott would turn away from her, that he would
tire, not of her, but of her restless moods and her emotional highs and
lows?