Unknown

LAKE HAUPIRI MOON

Mary Moore

What was it about him that made her nervous?

Serenity had little experience with men, but something warned her Hudson Grey was dangerous.

She couldn’t see how he could pose any threat to her, though. Her position as his housekeeper on Lake Haupiri station was only temporary, and he believed her engaged. He was planning to marry soon himself. So why was she being such an idiot?

Because she didn’t trust him, she realized... and she trusted herself even less.

“Love is the one ingredient I don’t want in my marriage”

Hudson had changed from the pleasant, if annoying, smiling conversationalist to a granite man with a hard expression and challenging, cynical eyes.

“Why not?” Serenity felt absurdly shaken.

“Why not love?”

“Been there, done that, next question.” His voice was harsh.

“Don’t be flippant. What do you mean? That you’ve been in love and it didn’t work out? Perhaps she wasn’t the right girl.”

“Oh, yes, she was the right girl. I built this house for her. Don’t you think it’s a nice house?”

“Yes, I do,” Serenity said uncertainly. “Why didn’t you marry her, if she was the right girl?”

“She died,” he replied flatly.

High
up in the Nurses’ Home, Serenity James sat on her mattress in the late afternoon sun. Her bed was stripped, her cupboard and wardrobe empty, her luggage packed in her small Mini, because today she was leaving town. Her wedding gown, starkly simple, hung on a white satin-padded coathanger, and in her hand was a photo of John.

She wished she had not told Barbie that she would wait until she came off duty to say goodbye, but Barbie had insisted, and she had been her good friend. That’s why she had chosen her to be bridesmaid, and what a fuss that had caused . . . not quite suitable. But according to Mrs Bellamy nothing about Serenity James was suitable, not herself, not her friend, not her accent, not even her mother.

She looked at John's photo. What a handsome boy he was! Why did she still think of him as a boy? He was twenty-five, a grown man. Poor John, he had loved her, but had not been strong enough to stand the pressure. Serenity had chosen this particular photo because it didn't accentuate his weak chin and self-indulgent mouth.

Idly she turned it over and read the verse he had written on the back.

Serenity James is tall and slim,

Serenity James has an enchanting grin,

Serenity James has a figure divine
,

And Serenity James is mine... all mine.

Serenity looked at the pair of hospital scissors which she had left on the top of the dressing table. Before she left, she meant to cut her wedding dress into tiny bitesized pieces, and the photo of John, too. But she couldn’t bring herself to the point of making the first slash. It was such a lovely dress, and she had looked rather splendid in it. She hadn’t chosen the material, she hadn’t chosen the style, Mrs Bellamy had even chosen the boutique where it had been sewn. Mrs Bellamy was very organised. Mrs Bellamy was a pain!

Barbie burst in at the door. ‘Oh, Serenity, you waited. I was sure you’d take off, and the hurrieder I went, the behinder I got.’ She collapsed on the bed. ‘Oh, I’m going to miss you so much.’

Serenity smiled at her friend. ‘You’ve got Robbie, you’ll make out.’

‘I hate this town,’ Barbie said fiercely. ‘I won’t live here when I marry. The Bellamys think they own it. If John had just stuck it out, but he’s so gutless.’

Serenity grinned. ‘I didn’t choose him for his guts, as you so delicately put it. I chose him because he was charming and sensitive and shy, and I knew he was weak—I’ve always known that. I just loved him, and tried to protect him. I don’t blame him one bit.’

‘Well... I do. To walk out on a girl like you, because Mummy told him to.’

‘You forget Mummy had been conditioning him for twenty-four years before he met me. She was in on the ground floor, so to speak, and she had already chosen the wife for him. John stepped right out of character when he started going round with me. He took her head-on for the first time in his life, and it must have been a nasty shock for her.’

‘It didn’t last long,’ Barbie said with a significant sniff.

Serenity smoothed her faded jeans over her knees, picking a thread. ‘Give him his due. Barbie. It was a whole new experience for him. She is the power behind the throne in the family. Mr Bellamy may be Mayor of the town. Chairman of the Businessmen’s Association, and all the rest, but she has the brains and the drive, and everybody knows it. He knows he’d be nothing without her; she is a strong determined woman. John couldn’t grow up in that atmosphere and not be affected by it.’

‘You’re still making excuses for him,’ Barbie accused.

‘Yes,’ Serenity admitted with a smile. ‘I guess I always will. He is just so nice, and so helpless. If we had married I would have sat back and made him take decisions, made him feel
he
was head of the outfit. He’d have grown to fit the part, but it was tough enough going until my dearly beloved father put in his once-in-a-lifetime appearance. Then it was all over.’

‘You’re so calm about it all. Today was to have been your wedding day, and you sit there all forgiving. . . you make me cross. I’d have been out for blood. Your mother named you well—are you as serene inside as you are on the outside?’

‘What an indelicate question,’ Serenity replied. Then added honestly, ‘Not quite. I'm still a bit staggered—it all happened so suddenly. I'll get away on my own for a while and sort myself out.’

‘I’d sort John’s mother out,' Barbie said bitterly. ‘Not to mention John himself. Oh, Serenity, do you still love him? Oh, I’m a crass stupid beast! If Robbie left me, I’d kill myself.’

‘You won’t have to, Robbie is just as besotted as you are,’ Serenity comforted her. Then she sat staring out of the window for a moment in silence. 'Love John? Yes, I guess I do. And I hurt for him. He made such a brave showing, and now he must be feeling awful. She actually made him use the ticket we had for our honeymoon— Australia, Hawaii, Fiji. Imagine doing those places on your own when you’d planned to share it with someone you loved. She must have been completely insensitive to force him into it, and it will just make him think of me all the more.’

‘Why don’t you think of yourself instead of John?’ Barbie said fiercely. ‘You’ve been hurt, too.’

‘Habit, I guess.’ Serenity brushed her fair hair back from her pale face. ‘I’ve watched out for him ever since we met, trying to protect him from the power maniac who ruled his life, and ours wasn’t a wild passionate affair—not like you and Robbie. John and I were friends, we sort of drifted together. I was so close to my mother that I really did not need anyone else in my life. You’re the only true friend I have . . .’

‘Rubbish,’ Barbie interrupted. ‘You’ve got loads of friends, everyone likes you. You were the most popular girl in our class.’

Serenity waved her hands in protest. ‘I didn’t mean poor unlovable lonely me, you ninny. I like people, and I get on well with most of them, but I really only needed my mother. She was so young, such fun to be with, that I hardly bothered with my own age group. Then when I went to Nursing School you and I hit it off right from the first day, and that was fantastic. What I'm trying to explain is how John and I became friends. . .’

‘Oh, that’s easy to understand. He was in hospital when your mother was killed. You were specialing him, and he was kind and sympathetic, and when he got better, he filled up that gap in your life . . . well, he helped. We
all
tried to help. I loved your mother too, she’s the reason I came here with you when we finished training. She was a pet, treating me like another daughter. But John had an inside track, you were nursing him on nights and he got close to you. That’s what I can’t understand now. How could he hurt you like this? I could kill him.’

‘With your temper, New Zealand will never have to worry about over-population,’ Serenity offered with a grin.

‘Don’t side-step the issue,’ Barbie burst out, jumping to her feet. ‘I won’t forgive him for this. I don’t see how you can! He should have stood up for you that night, and he just wilted. If he’d been a man, he would have punched that man who said he was your father, right in his mean miserable mouth.’

‘Who said he wasn’t my father?’ Serenity replied carefully.

‘What sort of a man was he? To wait twenty-one years, then come full of venom to your pre-wedding dinner and announce that while you used his name you were not his daughter, that you were the reason for his marriage breaking up all those years ago. And he didn’t even know your mother was dead. He wanted to hurt her, too.’

Serenity did not answer.

Barbie raged on, ‘In front of all the toffs in the town, he almost accused your mother of adultery and rubbished you, and John did not defend you. He just stood there like a stuffed dummy, and then his mother ordered him to his room, and he went like a lamb.’

‘She told him she would handle it,’ Serenity answered quietly. ‘She had always directed his life before I came on the scene, so he automatically obeyed her. He was frightened.’

‘Who wasn’t? I was terrified. That man was roaring drunk, and so angry that everyone was scared. Yet you walked right up to him and gave him the only answer possible. I’ll never forget his face when you said that you were so glad he wasn’t your father, and that you admired your mother for making a better choice.’

‘It was a terrible thing to say,’ Serenity said in a low voice. ‘I wish I had asked him to talk to me in private. He turned and ran out and I don’t even know where he came from or where he went to. He had all that anger and bitterness locked inside him all those years and it exploded on him. I’ll bet it didn’t give him half the satisfaction he thought it would.’

‘You’re incredible! What does it take to make you hate someone? He has ruined your life, and you’re trying to make excuses for him.’

‘Not really. You didn’t see his face when I spoke to him. He was ashamed ... he just crumpled.’

‘But you think what he said of your mother. Where’s your loyalty? Did she ever mention him?’

Serenity shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘Yes, she said she was married. She said that he left her before I was born. I was never curious about him, I never missed having a father. That sounds silly, I know, but I had a wonderfully happy childhood, and I was perfectly happy with just one parent.’

‘But when you were older? Didn’t you ask questions then? You had such a wonderful relationship with your mother, surely she could have confided in you, trusted you?’

‘She did. She offered to tell me and I said I had no interest in it. She said he had walked out on her, and that it was all her fault and that he was a very good man, and she had hurt him badly. Her own family had been so angry with her, and she had been so ashamed that she moved up here to the North Island and started a new life for herself. I could see it was tearing her apart to discuss it, even so generally, and I did not want to hear the details. What was it to me? I had never met any of the people. I would not have her humiliate herself in front of me. Whatever she did had not been done lightly, and she did not have to explain herself to me. She was my mother, had always loved me and cared for me, and I loved her, and that’s all that mattered.’

‘But aren't you curious now?’

‘I don’t know. If I am, it’s too late. Among her papers was a large envelope marked, ‘Burn without opening’, so I did. If she were alive now, or if she had envisioned this happening, she would have prepared me for it. Apparently it was sheer chance that my father read a report of the forthcoming wedding in that sickly society paper Mrs Bellamy drools over.’

‘What
are
you going to do now, Serenity? I can’t bear your going away on your own. Matron said for you to take leave, then come back here where you belong. She said it was only a nine-days’ wonder, and it is, too. Look, Serenity, everyone loved and respected your mother here. She was a wonderful person. She’d been Dr Saveny’s receptionist for years and was everyone’s trusted friend. She was a counsellor and friend to half the town, and they like you too, so give them a chance. No one will blame you for something that happened before you were born, and they won’t condemn her either. Nobody would believe that your mother did anything ugly in her whole life. She'll be remembered for what she was ... a very special person.’

‘No, I won’t come back here. I'm not bitter, but I just don’t want to live here. I’ve sold our cottage to the Brent family—I'm so glad I let it out when Mother died. I couldn't have lived there without her, so it was a good thing that I cleared it out and moved into the Nurses’ Home, as I couldn’t have faced it all now.’

‘You’ll write to me, Serenity,’ Barbie pleaded. ‘I don’t want to lose touch.’

‘Yes, I’ll write.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Down South. Mother used to talk of the place she grew up in. It was a beautiful valley away in the hills. I’m going to go and have a look. No one will remember her after all these years, and they won’t know who I am.’