All For You

by Denise Robins

Genres: Sagas; Romance

Synopsis

It had been one of those short wartime engagements. Darley had been called up just two hours after the wedding and since then Finella had spent five long years alone. During those lonely years Finella had grown up, become more independent ? and met Gilfred Bryte. Now that her husband was coming home again, she knew that she must choose between the two men. Was it strong, self-confident Gil she loved, or the gentle husband she had almost forgotten?

Release date: December 5, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 208

Sample

“Now that it’s all over and I know he’ll be back at any moment—I just can’t believe it’s true,” said Finella.

And her lovely, long-shaped eyes which were so thickly black-lashed, held a look in this moment which might almost be called ‘dazed’. A pathetic, childish look. The big, heavily built man sitting beside her on the red-plush sofa in the Mirabelle Restaurant where they were dining, saw that look but was unmoved by its poignancy, its defencelessness. That childish quality in Finella—the slenderness of her, the fragility of bone—her small wrists and ankles, the tawny mane of hair curving to her neck—all that was so very young about her—appealed to Gilfred Bryte’s senses but did not touch his pity. He ought to leave her alone. He knew it. He ought never to have started the affair with her, knowing that she had a husband in the Forces; a Regular officer fighting abroad whilst he, still in the middle thirties and only a few years older than Finella’s husband, held down a ‘cushy’ job in a reserved occupation. He ought, now that he knew Darley Martington was coming home, to make his exit. Give the young couple a chance.

Finella herself wanted that chance. She had told Gil Bryte that many times.

She was telling him so again this moment. With that ‘lost’, forlorn note in her voice, she said:

“Gil, we ought not to see each other any more. I’m terribly fond of you. But I’m fond of Darley, too. And he’s my husband. You’ve no idea what sweet letters he writes … how he’s looking forward to seeing me again, to beginning life with me. Gil … I must give him—and myself—a chance. I must!”

The man raised his brows in a deprecating way and blew a cloud of cigar smoke through his nostrils. The wide, strong nostrils of a strong, selfish man who liked to get his own way in all things. He did not move a muscle when Finella touched his arm and repeated her almost piteous cry.

“I must, Gil … you do understand, don’t you?”

Then he turned and looked at her; for an instant examined critically the almost flawless young face upturned to his. She was ravishingly pretty, this girl who was twenty-four and looked seventeen; had done four years’ service as a driver in an Ambulance Corps; driven through blitzes, winter ice, summer heat, and stood up to it; strong despite that delicate appearance. She was lovely with that golden glow to her skin and the bronzed hair that had red lights in it; the smoke-grey eyes and full sweet mouth. As for her throat—so long and white and slender—he had a mad desire to kiss it now in front of all these people sitting around the restaurant. But he pulled himself together and called abruptly to a passing waiter to bring him another double whisky.

A slight feeling of despair settled upon Finella. Gil wouldn’t answer. He was cross. She could see it. She knew him so well. After all, they had been going out to parties and dances and lunches pretty continually for over six months now.

She had grown accustomed to his ‘black’ moods. She knew that he was a ruthless egotist. Spoiled, because a great many women ran after Gil Bryte. He had a ‘way’ with them. He was not too easy; a little insolent, often casual. Women liked that. He had intrigued Finella, so used to easy conquests. Admirers could be two a penny to a lovely young married woman like herself with a husband overseas. Until she met Bryte, Finella had skimmed the cream off existence; flirted a bit here and there. Nothing more serious. Darley, her husband, had been her most serious consideration always.

She wished now, in a queer perverse way, that she had never met Gil Bryte nor fallen a victim to his strange fascination. She had tried once or twice to get away … like a fly struggling helplessly in a spider’s web. But he kept his hold on her. Perhaps because he did not always spoil her and indulge her every whim. Or because he made her want to please him. Strange Gil—when he was in a good mood he was delightful. Intelligent, amusing, ambitious. His father, old Tom Bryte, Labour M.P., had risen from nothing. Gil was self-educated, self-made. The day of the idle rich was over … the Brytes meant to see to that. Gil was an engineer. He was considered a brilliant man. He had already made a lot of money and he would make more when he switched over from his war job to factories of his own. And he had ambitions towards a Parliamentary career for himself.

It was Gil’s immense enthusiasm for work, his terrific reserves of energy which fascinated Finella. Something in that rugged face of his with the cold, critical eyes, the mop of dark curly hair, the square dented chin. She had to confess to herself that it was more than a little thrilling to feel that this powerful man was in love with her. Wanted her to put an end to her marriage with Darley and marry him.

She shivered a little and hastily, with slender fingers shaking, lit a cigarette for herself. She was smoking too much. Bad for the nerves. She had ‘nerves’ at the moment. Everything was crowding down upon her. Her deep-rooted affection for Darley; her infatuation for Gil Bryte. Four years of hard driving and leaves, mostly spent with her mother-in-law, Lady Martington, in Darley’s lovely home. Difficult leaves, a difficult association with a proud, possessive woman who adored her only son and had disapproved of the wedding right from the start.

Suddenly, Finella uttered a sound that might have been a sob. The band was playing an old tune which she liked: ‘Strange Enchantment’. There were many happy-looking couples on the floor. Finella loved dancing, and she, too, wanted to be happy. But tonight she could not have danced if she had been paid to do so. She felt utterly depressed. Yet London was mad with joy, dancing, gasping with relief because the war was over … and there was peace in Europe again. Lots of these women on the dance-floor were probably mad with joy, too, because their husbands or sons or lovers were coming home. She should be on top of her form with the rest … delirious at the thought of seeing Darley.

That was what she had wanted; what she had intended. But it was too late. She had grown tired of the waiting, the strain; the endurance test had been too much for her. And Gil Bryte had finished things.

She was desperately unhappy.

“I want to go home, Gil,” she said in an undertone.

He gave her a compassionate look now and took her hand.

“Tired, darling?”

“Yes,” she said. “Of everything.”

He smiled at that and helped the slim young arms into the small ermine bolero.

“Silly child,” he murmured. “Don’t worry so much. It’s a great life if you don’t weaken, you know.”

Finella’s great eyes stared up at him desolately.

“But I am weakening … that’s the trouble.”

“Tired of me?”

“You know I’m not. But the position is so hopeless. I tell you, Darley will be back any day now. His letter to me this morning said it was only a question of a week or so at the most. His mother has heard the same. She rang me up. I’ve got to go down to the Manor tomorrow for the week-end.”

Gilfred Bryte frowned. He paid his bill and followed Finella’s graceful figure from the restaurant. In the foyer, whilst they waited for a taxi, he said:

“Do you know where Martington is now?”

“Oh, the usual—somewhere in Italy.”

“H’m. And so you want to be here to meet him … the eager little wife ready to crown the brow of the returning hero with laurels, eh?” said Gil, in a voice of some bitterness.

Finella coloured and withdrew her gaze from him.

“That isn’t very kind of you, Gil.”

“I’m not kind—you ought to know that by now. But I’m crazy about you, my dear, and I’m not going to find it easy to stand aside and see you walk into another man’s arms.”

“But I’m married to him, Gil.”

“You made some vows and signed a document, yes. An hour or two after which, he left you. Whereupon you called yourself Mrs. Darley Martington but remained, in fact, Miss Finella Wood. You are no more his wife than you are mine. If as much … because you love me and you don’t love him. Am I right?”

The girl looked desperate again.

“Not altogether, Gil. I love him, too. Oh, it sounds awful of me … you may not understand … nobody could. But I was once terribly in love with Darley. If he had stayed with me I would never have altered. I know it. But five years is a long time. I was such a child when he left. I’m a woman now. I’ve been through so much. And I’ve almost forgotten him. But I haven’t forgotten that I did once love and marry him. And it is my duty to be here when he comes back.”

Gil Bryte’s cheeks reddened with annoyance.

“It all sounds heroic, my dear. Perhaps if that’s how you really feel, I ought to back gracefully out. Shall we call it a day after tonight?”

She threw him a moist, reproachful look, her lips quivering. They did not speak again until they were in the taxi driving Finella to Church Street, Kensington. She was staying there with her married sister, Barbara. Barbara, who was two years older than Finella, had a husband in the R.N.V.R. Jack Stevenson was not yet demobilized. Barbara lived in one of those small, charming little Georgian houses at the top of the hill, alone at the moment with her small boy of two. She was just as happy and settled and complacent as Finella was the reverse.

Finella thought now of her sister. She always envied Barbie because her life was so smooth … she had never really been parted from Jack. He was older than any of them. A chartered accountant in civilian life, he had been doing a paymaster’s job in the Navy most of the war, and had only been at sea for one year, then held shore jobs. Barbara was devoted to him, and there were no complications in her life. “But in mine,” thought Finella drearily, “there are endless ones. I can’t give Gil up altogether. I can’t …”

He was holding her now in the curve of one strong arm. His lips brushed her hair.

“Nella, little Nella,” he said, using his particular name for her. “Don’t leave me. I’m a gruff brute and a beast to torment you and I’ve no right to sneer at Martington, who has done a fine job in this war. He deserves a break, I know. But I love you. And I can’t give you up without a struggle.”

She crumpled a little in his embrace. He could always win her back like this when he was tender, tolerant, charming. She was so lonely and in need of his tenderness. His lips found hers and the passion he always lit in her flamed up. Yet in the midst of that kiss, she remembered something Darley had written in his last letter. At once it destroyed desire and made her ashamed.

I think only of the moment when I can take you in my arms again and kiss that wonderful mouth of yours, my darling … all through the long weary waiting I’ve dreamed of your lips and our remembered kisses. Lips that are mine, and waiting for me. My adored wife …

Lips that were his … waiting for him … that was tragic. It should have been so. It was what she had meant it to be. But he had been away so long, fighting … in Libya, in all those dreadful battles against Rommel … in Italy. Once wounded slightly and sent to Alexandria and Cairo to recuperate. But never home. Five long years away, gradually losing touch with her … oh, the long agony, the waste … the pity of it all!

Finella tore herself out of Gil Bryte’s arms. She was weeping bitterly. He had only seen her cry once before and that was a touching incident when she had seen a dog run over while she was with him. She had burst into tears then. She was so young and soft-hearted. So indeterminate in her emotions. He knew that he ought to have pity but he couldn’t leave her alone. And he was afraid that the nicest side of her, her real intrinsic wish to do the right thing, would control her final decision.

“Darling, don’t upset yourself,” he said. “It’ll all be all right.” (Damn the taxi. They were already pulling up in Bedford Gardens.) “I’ll ’phone you from the office. What time do you go down to Godalming?”

She sat up, blowing her nose forlornly.

“On the ten-ten.”

“I’ll ring you at nine. You won’t walk out on me, will you, Nella?”

She shook her head. For an instant she pressed her wet cheek to his.

“I couldn’t. You’re so much a part of my life now, Gil.”

In the dimness of the taxi his eyes narrowed with triumph. He knew it. He was necessary to this child. His strong personality, his clever love-making, even though he was only the son of a man who had started life as a coal-miner.

The Brytes were Lancashire folk. Rough and ready; shrewd. Gilfred … it was a queer name, a whim of his mother’s. Gil, after his paternal grandmother, Gillian and Fred, after her father. He had all their inborn roughness, their real dislike of the ‘upper classes’. But he had acquired a certain polish. He used it for Finella’s benefit. He wanted her as his wife. He didn’t like the hearty, self-reliant type. And he had no compunction about taking her (if he could) from Darley Martington. Darley, who was Wellington, and Sandhurst, and ‘Army’, son of a Cabinet Minister, a rigid Conservative, knighted in the last war; now deceased.

Finella was thinking:

“I rely so much on Gil now. His advice, his friendship. He’s so clever and wise, and if he went out of my life, I’d miss all the mental stimulus of it, the thrill of the telephone calls, our companionship, everything we’ve built up.”

But what about the things she and Darley, her husband, had built up five years ago?

She kissed Gil briefly and stepped out of the taxi.

A few moments later she was in the house. It was wrapped in darkness and silence. Barbara and little Mark, her son, were asleep. By the light of a torch, Finella tip-toed up to the spare room, switched on the light and stood a moment, staring around her.

It was all tidy; dear old Barbie must have come in and put away the disorder Finella had left. (Tidiness was not one of her strong points.) Barbie was domesticated and good at all things in the house. Finella was the artistic one; had, when she left school, wanted to devote her life to painting. She used to paint quite well … do clever little sketches of people. But the war had knocked all that on the head. At nineteen she had, of her own accord, abandoned art and joined a Red Cross driving unit. A job she had stuck to even after her marriage. She never had time to paint now. Only to draw occasionally …

Her gaze lit on a photograph standing in a leather frame beside the bed. Darley in his Captain’s uniform. It had been taken in Cairo two years ago. (He was Acting-Major now.) She moved across the room—picked up the photograph and looked long and earnestly at it. How good-looking he was! His was a chiselled face with a sweet good-tempered mouth and frank eyes. The antithesis of Gil Bryte. Darley was slim built, boyish in type. Brown hair, fair skin, hazel eyes. A typical Army officer in some respects, Finella mused. Disciplined, concise, a lover of outdoor life. Darley was wonderful on a horse; had won cups at many Point-to-Points; was a good shot, a keen fisherman. Thoroughly English. But sensitive to the artistic things of life. He knew little about painting but had adored and fostered Finella’s gift in that direction. And he loved music almost as much as she did.

They had fallen in love as soon as they met. It was at a dance down at Sandhurst. Finella had gone to it as the guest of a boy whom she and Barbara used to know at their old home. He had introduced her to the handsome young subaltern, Darley Martington, earlier on. It had proved fatal. Darley had claimed most of her dances … and Finella’s unfortunate escort had retired ruefully from the contest. It was a ‘go’ right from the start between Darley and Finella.

Her thoughts winged back to that night … what an exciting night in her life … she had been nineteen, unspoiled, happy-go-lucky, still living in a world that was untroubled by war.

She wore a rose-pink chiffon dress and a cluster of rosebuds in her hair. Shining hair, shining eyes, fresh and perfumed as her roses, deliciously young. Darley had fallen for all of it at once. She was the first girl he had wanted to marry. At twenty-six, in the Regular Army, it was considered foolish to marry. But he had money of his own, which made a difference. He decided that he must become engaged to Finella … there couldn’t be another girl in the world to equal her. He couldn’t risk losing her.

Finella sat down on the edge of the bed … caught in the web of her memories … her head dropped … her lashes were still wet with tears.

THAT had been at the beginning of August 1939.

Darley and Finella emerged from the dance at Sandhurst madly in love. Two young things deeply conscious of their youth and inexperience, new to the intense emotion they evoked in each other, but certain it was everlasting.

He took her, straight away, down to the Manor House which was his home and inheritance—six miles out of Godalming, in lovely wooded country—to see his mother.

Lady Martington did not approve. She received her son’s lovely girl-friend with mixed feelings. She admitted that Finella was beautiful and had charming manners and although not ‘anybody’ in particular, was the daughter of a doctor (That helped!) And incidentally that she had artistic talent. But Darley was much too young to think of marriage. He had a career to make in the Army. Besides, Lady Martington had other plans. Knew another girl whom she wanted for a daughter-in-law.

But all Lady Martington’s little hints and little lectures and little efforts to prevent her son’s marriage failed. The outbreak of war settled the question … spelt ruin to Lady Martington’s hopes as well as the hopes of a great many other millions in the world. Darley insisted on an engagement immediately. Then when, in October 1939, he was ordered abroad he insisted upon marriage.

Finella, sitting in her bedroom on this warm April night … so changed from that other Finella … felt a deep pang, akin to real grief, as her memories took her to the day of her wedding.

It should have been down at Christchurch, in her home. But Barbara, then only engaged to her Jack and still living with their widowed mother, was tactless enough to develop mumps a week before the wedding. Everything had to be altered. Lady Martington, resigned to the affair but no more pleased than she had been at first, took command. (She was a very commanding woman, Finella had since learned that to her cost.)

Mrs. Wood was left to nurse the unfortunate Barbara. Her ladyship arranged a hurried wedding and reception in London. Finella and Darley, more than ever enamoured of each other, allowed themselves to be swept along on the tide of Lady Martington’s imperiousness. The bride stayed with an aunt in Kensington and her uncle gave her away.

Oh, that unforgettable morning. A golden autumn day in London … a day of mild temperatures, slight mist, red and brown leaves; that hint of melancholy that always settles over London in October.

Finella was a white bride. She had wanted that so badly, for Darley. He had wanted it, too. It was to be his last memory of her; a slim figure in creamy satin wearing the double row of pearls which was his wedding present; and a Russian head-dress on her tawny head; a foam of delicate lace (the veil was lent by Lady Martington). A sheaf of lilies, an ardent, rapt young face, exquisitely beautiful in its intensity.

She had felt intense … bewildered by so much sweetness in life … Darley’s love and longing … her own warm impulses towards him. Oh, she had meant every word she said when she took those marriage vows. She had wanted to make Darley a good wife. She had meant to be loyal … for ever … until death parted them.

She had come out of the church … Holy Trinity in Brompton Road … smiling adorably for the photographers. (It must be in the Society journals … her ladyship had seen to that.) She had felt that life was a miracle. Even though Darley had to go away and fight for his country, they were to have a whole week together first. And everyone said the war wouldn’t last long. Darley would soon be back.

How it hurt to remember how confident she had been, how pathetically proud to stand beside the young officer in his khaki uniform, with his sword at his side and his hazel eyes brilliant with passionate love for her.

It was in the middle of the reception that the blow fell. Telegrams were pouring in … from the Martingtons’ many relations and friends; from hers. She was just about to cut the cake with Darley’s sword, when the message was brought to him by a despatch rider from his regimental depot.

Then it was all over … the gay, glorious reception … all happiness over for him. He had been recalled. He must go at once. And although he could not tell anybody … he knew that it meant that he would be at a port ‘somewhere in the North’ by this time tomorrow … awaiting convoy overseas.

A bitter blow for the bridegroom. Finella knew how bitter. It had wiped all the boyishness from Darley’s face. And when he broke the news to her, she felt her heart sink like a stone. He had gripped her hand … the one wearing the new slim circlet … very tightly and whispered:

“Be brave, darling. I’ve got to be, too. It’s grim … but I’m a soldier and you’re a soldier’s wife, now. Chin up, sweetheart. Smile … let the others see you smile.”

She had done as he asked. But she had felt her heart crack a little. Almost at once she had slipped away to change from her gleaming bridal clothes into her going-away suit and hat. But the light had gone out of her eyes … as it had done out of his. There was to be no wedding-night, no honeymoon … just nothing. It was a cruel war. For the first time, really, the war struck at Finella, and life struck too … warning her that it was not to be all roses and moonshine and kisses.

She was brave because Darley asked her to be. She guessed that this meant that he was ‘off’ into the blue. She might not see him again for long weeks and months. (Oh, but sh. . .