The Hidden Years (64 page)

He had told her before they married that he wanted
children. Children were important to him, he had told her, far more
important than sex. They had been lucky to find one another, but then
she had lost him. Another punishment…

'Faye.'

She focused briefly on Sage's face, noting absently that
these last days had changed her sister-in-law in some indefinable
way… had wiped away the taut mask which had begun to harden
her features and had left her face somehow younger and more vulnerable.

She had always deliberately held Sage at a distance. How
could she, a woman so obviously sexually orientated and experienced,
ever understand her own dark fears? And yet now somehow she sensed that
in Sage she would find the one confidante who would not make
judgements, whom it would be impossible to shock…or would
it? She smiled grimly to herself, even now almost unable to believe
what she had actually done.

'My mother's dead.'

She said it unemotionally this time, wearily, tasting the
words and finding as she had already suspected that they had no meaning
for her, no flavour… that in her mother's death there was
for her no joy, no release, nothing other than a vast melancholic sea
of pity, not for herself but for the woman who in her own way had
surely endured just as much, and maybe even more than she had done
herself.

'Look, if you'd rather not talk… I've sent Cam
for some tea…'

'No.' Faye reached out and touched Sage's arm. 'I do want
to talk—I need to talk.'

She started speaking, slowly at first, anxious to find the
words… the phrases that would lay bare the stark reality of
what had happened to her, knowing with distaste that the last thing she
wanted to do was to shroud what had happened to her in drama, not
realising that, as Sage stiffened with shock and disgust at what she
was hearing, the very fact that Faye was paring her past down to its
bones made what she was saying all the more horrendous and appalling.

They were interrupted once when Camilla arrived with the
tea.

Sage took the tray from her, reassuring her that Faye was
no longer hysterical, watching half enviously as mother and daughter
embraced and then Faye said firmly, 'I think you ought to be doing your
homework. You've still got those exams ahead of you, you
know…'

'Homework… exams… I'm tired of
them,' Camilla protested, but Sage could see that she was reassured by
her mother's calm and placid manner.

She hesitated a moment in the doorway, but Faye clapped
her hands and said quietly, 'Homework, please, Cam. After all, after
Liz has had her operation we'll be spending a lot of time at the
hospital.'

'Do you think Gran will be all right? I mean…'

'We don't know, Cam. What we do know is that she has a
very strong constitution and that she's in the best possible hands,'
Faye told her, and once again Sage reflected how wise Faye was in not
giving her daughter any false promises, any false hopes, in treating
her as the adult she was starting to become without burdening her too
much with the reality of Liz's chances of recovery.

After Camilla had reluctantly closed the door behind her,
both women were silent for a moment while Sage automatically poured the
tea.

She was handing Faye her cup when the other suddenly
laughed shakily.

'What is it?' Sage asked her anxiously, fearing another
outburst of hysteria.

'Nothing. It's just that for a moment you were so like
Liz—you poured the tea without spilling a single
drop…'

Sage stared down at the pristine white tray cloth,
frowning a little as she searched for the familiar stains which were
the normal result of any attempt on her part to wield the heavy antique
silver teapot which her mother always insisted on using for afternoon
tea.

'Heavens, so I have…' She smiled too, and then
her smile quickly changed, her eyes sombre and vulnerable, so that Faye
immediately read her mind.

'Don't,' she chided quietly, putting her hand over Sage's.
'It isn't an omen, a sign that… that things won't go well
for Liz. She will be all right. Don't ask me how I know it…
I just have this feeling…' She flushed and looked
uncomfortable before adding huskily, 'It may sound strange, but today
in some way I've felt so close to David. Almost as though he's here
with us, but just in another room, if you can understand
that… I felt it this morning, when… when I was
with… with her, and then again afterwards…'

'You still miss him, don't you?'

'Don't you? He was such a unique person—so very
special.'

'Yes,' Sage agreed. So much that she had never understood
before about the relationship between her sister-in-law and her brother
was now becoming clear to her. She thought she had suffered, had known
pain, but her pain was nothing when compared with Faye's…
Nothing.

They talked for a long time. Faye held nothing back, her
hands twisting frantically together when she explained how much she had
resented her mother. How much she had dreaded going to see her.

'Then why did you?' Sage asked her. 'In your
shoes—'

'I had to. It was a compulsion, a bargain I had made with
the gods, if you like. I can't explain… I only know it was
something I had to do. A bargain I had made with fate—payment
for the good things in my life.

'You see, when I married David I refused to let her come
to the wedding. I refused to have anything to do with her, in fact, and
then after he was killed…' She gave a tiny shudder, and Sage
squeezed her hand sympathetically, understanding all too well what she
was struggling to say.

She marvelled that Faye had been able to endure, to
survive what she had survived, knowing humblingly that in the same
circumstances she could never have done so; that her too highly tuned
nervous system would have snapped under such an enormous strain. No
words she could think of were adequate enough to convey to Faye all
that she herself was feeling. She could feel tears of sympathy and rage
sting her eyes as she contemplated all that her sister-in-law had had
to endure.

Now
she could understand Faye's
marriage with David… and she could understand something else
as well. 'My mother knew, about… about what happened to you?'

'Yes,' Faye said simply. 'I was living here when they
wrote to me to tell me that my mother had become ill, that she had had
a nervous breakdown of sorts. Your mother came home and found me in the
most dreadful state… I confided in her. She was
wonderful… not critical in any way.'

'
Critical
...' Sage stared at her.
'Critical of you, do you mean? Faye, how could anyone criticise you?'

'Quite easily,' Faye assured her sombrely, shadows chasing
across her eyes as she remembered her time at university. 'Sometimes I
even wonder if it was all my fault, if I didn't somehow subconsciously
invite—'

She stopped as Sage shook her head and said fiercely,
'Don't you
dare
say that—don't you even
dare think it. You were six years old, Faye… a
child… a
baby
… My God, when
I think of what you must have endured… How could your
mother, how could any woman allow that to happen to a
child…?'

Sage broke off. 'I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that.'

'I'm glad you did. You know, for a moment then you sounded
quite frighteningly maternal…'

Sage closed her eyes. Faye wasn't to know that she had
suddenly had a mental picture of a child in Daniel's image, with
Daniel's features softened into female form—his child, her
child… and that the thought of that child suffering in that
way made her want to clench her hands and tear at the flesh of the
people who had made her suffer until they were screaming in
agony… begging for release… begging for death.

The ferocity of her own emotions frightened her. She had
never envisaged herself feeling so violently protective towards a
child, had never envisaged herself as a maternal woman, and yet this
was not the first time recently that her imagination had created for
her the child that nature had never allowed her to conceive.

A small voice whispered that it wasn't too
late… that Daniel was not sexually indifferent to her, even
if his desire was spawned by anger and lust rather than tenderness and
love. She could still have his child… she could still steal
that most precious of all gifts from him.

It shook her that she, who had always tried to be so
honest with herself and with others, should so easily be able to
envisage herself acting with such guile and deceit. But she could not
do it… would not do it. It wouldn't be fair to the child,
the child who would one day want to know who had fathered him or her,
who would one day look at her with Daniel's eyes holding all of
Daniel's dislike and disgust…

She shuddered again, causing Faye to say anxiously, 'I'm
sorry, I've shocked you. I—'

'No, no, you haven't shocked me. I just wish that I'd
known sooner, that I'd realised…'

'It wouldn't have made any difference—telling
people wasn't any help… I discovered that with David. Oh,
for a while it eased the torment, the anguish, but it never made it go
away. I loved David. He gave me the happiest years of my life and he
gave me Camilla, but sexually…' She hung her head, and
Sage's heart ached for her. How could a man be allowed to do this to a
child? Destroying her so completely that the woman within her would
never be fully allowed to mature, that she would always have her right
to her own sexuality shadowed by the crime perpetrated against her.

'David loved you. Sex wasn't important to him…
You know, I often used to think that he ought to have been a Jesuit, a
priest…'

'Yes, I think he thought the same thing himself. He loved
young people, he loved teaching them and guiding them, but he was too
honest to enter the church when by his own admission he felt no
religious call to do so. He always felt that he could not believe
strongly enough to be able to do God justice… at least that
was what he told me, and then of course I think he wanted children for
Cottingdean, for Edward. He knew how much that meant to
Edward…' She broke off as she saw Sage's face, making soft
sounds of distress in her throat.

'Oh, Sage, I am sorry. I didn't mean to hurt
you… Of course you could have married and had
children…in fact I'm sure one day you will, but…'

'My children could never have come anywhere near meaning
as much to my father as David's,' Sage supplied heavily for her, waving
aside Faye's anguished protest.

'Let's not lie to one another, Faye. You've been honest
with me—let me be equally honest with you. My father never
loved me, not the way he loved David—not even the way he
loved you. As a child I fought desperately hard to make him notice
me… all I succeeded in doing was making him dislike me even
more. I can never really understand why my mother had me.'

'She loves you, Sage.'

Sage gave her a wry smile. 'Does she?'

'Yes,' Faye told her firmly, surprising her by adding
thoughtfully, 'In fact I've always wondered if secretly she didn't love
you even more than she did David.'

Sage lifted her eyebrows and gave Faye a glinting, mocking
smile so hard-edged with self-dislike that it made Faye wince for her.

'Now I
know
you're imagining things.
David's death killed my father. They both loved him far more than they
loved me… and why not? He was far more worthy of being
loved.'

'Yes… I often used to think that he was almost
saintlike, so far above me in his attitudes to others that I used to
despair…'

'I've often wondered why you never remarried…
now I do know,' Sage told her quietly. 'You're such a beautiful woman.'

Faye made a sound of embarrassed denial deep in her
throat, but Sage insisted, 'Yes, you are… and I'm not the
only one to think so. Mother's specialist definitely has a soft spot
for you.'

'Alaric Ferguson?'

If Faye was aware of how much she had given away in using
his Christian name she didn't betray it.

'He's a very attractive man,' Sage told her. 'Very
attractive, and rather sexy as well.'

'You forget… sexy men…'

'God, Faye,
I'm sorry…'

Faye shook her head. 'It's all right. As a matter of
fact…' She gave Sage a thoughtful look and then said
quickly, 'I don't know what you're going to think of me for telling you
this, but today, after…well, after she had gone…
I felt so different, so…cleansed in some way. You see,
before she died, she was lucid for just a very short period of time. I
was sitting with her, holding her hand… They'd taken her to
hospital when they first realised what was wrong. She'd had a heart
attack during the night, a massive one which hadn't killed
her… not quite. Anyway, she opened her eyes and looked right
at me and then she said my name… That's the first time she's
done that for years… and as I looked at her, such a look of
misery and regret, such a look of desperate pleading came into her eyes
that I knew she knew, that she was remembering… that she was
asking me…'

'For forgiveness,' Sage supplied as Faye's voice broke.

'Yes…yes…for forgiveness, and, well,
it was as though for a moment David was there beside me, guiding me,
telling me that I must choose, that I could pay lip-service to her
silent plea… that I could say I forgave her, speak the
words, but withhold my true forgiveness from her, keep my heart locked
against her, or I could open my heart to her as an adult, a woman, and
take from her the huge burden of her suffering so that she could go
from this life in peace. The choice was mine… and mine alone.

'I can't describe the feeling to you… David
was
there, but there was no pressure from him, no instruction as to what I
should do. I looked at her, and it was as though she knew, and suddenly
the entire room seemed to be filled with some kind of light…
It seemed to fill me as well… I actually felt almost
euphoric, as though a burden had been lifted from me, and I swear as
she looked at me that she knew without my having to say it that I had
forgiven her…