I, Too, Have Loved

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Anna is trapped in an unhappy marriage. Then she meets Gary Forrester, a brilliant young engineer. Suddenly Cairo becomes an enchanted playground, and Anna finds happiness. But she will need all her courage to leave her husband...

Release date: October 16, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

It was not until that fateful afternoon in March when the khamsin blew up, and stopped the polo match which she had been watching, that Anna Rivington decided to leave her husband.

How she would leave him, and when, she did not begin to analyse, but a series of events that day influenced her to take at last the first step in a highly dramatic move.

She was sitting in the covered stand—overlooking Gezira Club—amongst a crowd of officers and wives watching the polo, with only one ambition; that the match should end and that she could keep her appointment with Gary.

She had been applauding the players, mechanically, with the crowd, and in a vague way answered the remarks made to her by the adjutant’s wife who sat beside her.

Once she had liked to watch the game. It had been exciting to hear the thud of the ponies’ hooves as they galloped and swerved, and to watch the flash of a stick as it went up in the air and hear the sharp crack that sent the ball spinning across the ground. But now she had a complex. She couldn’t bear it. It was connected much too closely with her husband, Francis.

Major Rivington was a fine player. His interest in the game amounted to a passion. It was that passion, coupled with other things, which had helped to separate Anna from her husband for the last two or three years.

But now, of course, she realised that it was her love for Gary which was really separating them. Her almost frantic and obliterating love for the young man—younger than herself—who had only come into her life three months ago.

All through the match, she kept looking at her watch. With every second that ticked away, her heart pounded deliriously at the thought of their meeting, and the outcome of it. It would mean more than their previous meetings. Gary was leaving Cairo tomorrow for England. He had received sudden orders from his employers to fly to London and Liverpool on urgent business, and he expected to be away for at least a month. And before he went, he expected her to give him her promise that she would arrange her divorce.

Now and again she dragged her thoughts from her lover and focussed on the polo team—those white, swift moving figures, on brown ponies, in a dazzle of hot sunshine. Francis was out there. Francis, excited out of his usual solid passivity, concentrating on his game. It was the only thing that could excite him now, she thought, with irony. He did not really mind whether she was here watching him or not. He would neither know nor bother to find out whether she was as content, for instance, as the adjutant’s wife, who knitted so placidly while she watched the polo, or whether she was utterly miserable and at breaking-point.

Francis never thought about anybody but himself and his polo ponies.

Then the khamsin—that warm, wild wind from the desert, bringing with it blinding clouds of sand, blew up and suddenly blotted out the sunlight. Across the hard blue of the sky raced angry clouds. The tall palms in the Club gardens bent and waved helplessly. A few moments later the watching crowd dispersed, escaping from the flying dust, grumbling. But it was the first bad day in Cairo for weeks. Since Christmas they had had wonderful weather.

When the game stopped, Anna Rivington made her way to the barrier and managed to attract her husband’s attention. Handing his pony over to one of the black grooms, he came towards her looking as bad tempered as he felt. He was not a big man and he had the lean hips of a hard rider, but wide powerful shoulders which gave a suggestion of strength, and a rather large head on which the fair curly hair was thinning fast. At the moment he was sweating profusely. His blue, handsome eyes were bloodshot and angry.

“Confound the infernal wind,” were his first words to Anna, “and we looked like winning easily.”

Anna held on to her hat. Her light tweed skirt was blowing about her legs. She said:

“I’m sorry. I just want to know if you’re coming back in the car with me, or if you’re waiting for the Colonel.”

Major Rivington wiped his face and neck, barely glancing at her.

“I’ll wait. The Colonel asked me to. I may go to the Turf Club with him for a drink, so you might as well get along, my dear.”

That suited Anna very well. She said:

“All right, Francis.”

“One of those black devils is going to get into a devil of a row,” added Major Rivington. “Thunderer went lame in that last chukka, and …”

There followed an angry onslaught against the groom to which Anna listened without answering. It interested her mildly to see how annoyed Francis became over anything connected with the sports in which he indulged. And where the comfort of horses was concerned he spared neither money nor time. She wondered if their married life would have been more of a success if he had been as sensitive about her welfare and happiness.

As she had told Gary many times when they talked things over, Francis was really a very good sort. No better and no worse, perhaps, than the average husband. A man who, after ten years of married life, has grown casual, if not indifferent, and who takes it for granted in an egotistical way that his wife is content just because she is his wife.

In his fashion, Francis was fond of her. But it was not the fashion that Anna wanted. It was not really the fashion any woman wanted. Some women were content to put up with half-hearted love-making and the boredom and loneliness of living with a man who has never bothered to delve into the secret places of his wife’s heart.

But for Anna, hers was no marriage at all. She could not begin to be content. Then the coming of Gary into her life had awakened in her the realisation of what she had missed.

Perhaps one of the things she most resented was the waste of time. The eleven best years of her youth had been given to Francis. To Gary, whom she loved as she had never believed she could love a man, she could only give the years that were left.

When she and Gary had first acknowledged their love to each other, one of the most important barriers between them, had seemed, to Anna, the difference in their ages. She was thirty-six, a woman well on the way to forty. Gary Forrester was twenty-seven—nine years younger. Although he could and did assure her repeatedly that she looked as young as he did, and she was well aware that she had kept her figure and her beauty, her age was a concrete fact, not to be denied.

Francis Rivington moved away from his wife, saying as he walked:

“Well, so long, my dear. I must go and change. Damn this wind.”

Anna stood silent a moment. The wind did not worry her. She was used to the khamsin after two years in Cairo. And, in a queer way, it made her excited and apprehensive. She walked across the polo-ground into the white buildings of Gezira Club, and out through the other entrance to the parking-place where she had left her car. She almost exulted in the wild rush of wind which played havoc with her hair. Removing her hat, she tied a blue silk handkerchief around her head, and slipped into the camel’s-hair coat which she had left in the back of the car. At this time of the year in Egypt, it grew suddenly, keenly cold without the heat of the sun.

Anna felt profoundly moved. She knew that today meant the turning point in her whole life; in Francis’ life, and Gary’s, too.

She drove her car out of the gate and turned towards Cairo. She hated Cairo. A noisy, dusty, dirty town, overcrowded with people. The streets thronged with natives in turbans or Egyptians in European suits, wearing the tasselled red tarbush on their heads, their long robes and scarves flying wildly in the gale. Camels and donkeys, used as a method of transport, moved incongruously alongside trams and motor vehicles.

The khamsin raged stormily. And something wild and turbulent within Anna Rivington responded to that storm.

She had not been at peace since she had first felt the touch of Gary Forrester’s lips on her mouth. The long golden days and the fantastically lovely nights, when the moon silvered the brown waters of the Nile, had brought her no peace. Only torment and doubt, and behind and beyond everything, the secret knowledge that this was a call she could not resist. That she, Anna Rivington, the daughter of a retired Colonel, married to a Major in one of the “crack regiments” accustomed to the routine and convention of life in military stations, both at home and abroad, was going to throw it all over and face a divorce.

As she turned the car into the broad busy street which led to Shepheard’s Hotel, Anna mused upon all that had changed her life so suddenly.

Her meeting with Gary had been pure chance. He was not an army man. He was an engineer employed at the moment at work on an important dam which was being built up the Nile by the Egyptian Government. It was up at the Winter Palace Hotel at Luxor where she and Francis had spent Christmas, that she had first met Gary at the Christmas dance. With both of them, it had been a case of love—hopeless love—at first sight. And after she had left Luxor, he had come down to Cairo frequently, to see her.

Francis knew nothing about it. She was sure of that. He was much too detached and phlegmatic to worry his head about her personal reactions to anyone or anybody. She was beautiful and popular with Cairo society, and he took it as a matter of course, when this young man or that hung around her. And Gary Forrester was always accepted wherever he went. He had a reputation for being one of the most brilliant engineers out here. He was earning big money and had leapt up the ladder of success as soon as he had left Cambridge. It was generally accepted that young Forrester would one day be a very important man in Egypt.

Within a few weeks of their first meeting, he had said:

“Come with me, Anna. Don’t let’s waste any time, darling. I love you—you must come with me.”

But she had refused to do it. She was crazily in love, but she had still some remnants of sanity, some feelings of obligation towards Francis. And although she was passionate, impulsive, she was not the type to give way to her feeling without a terrific mental and physical struggle. Gary was younger, less cautious. He wanted only one thing—complete possession of her, which meant their ultimate marriage.

But Anna, whilst agreeing with Gary, had awful moments of compunction. She was going to bring disgrace upon the name of “Rivington.” Francis was a proud man as well as a pompous one. It would take him a long time to get over the public slight. And then there were her parents. Elderly Army people who would never admit that she was justified in leaving her husband, no matter what she suffered.

No! She could not elope with Gary at a moment’s notice. It would be too sudden, too crude. She must have time to consider it and to act in a way which would not cause too much scandal and disruption.

Then this week, after almost three months of hectic meetings, whenever Gary could get down the Nile to see her; of mad, incautious letters; of telephone calls and cables, the matter seemed to solve itself.

In Anna’s beautiful sitting-room, her head suffragi, Isman, had lit a wood fire. Outside it was cold and the khamsin still raged. A greyish pall hung over Gezira. But here, in this room, it was warm and bright with firelight, and with its cool green linens and chintz curtains, books and spring flowers, it might have been England. For Anna had made her flat a typically English home and avoided any Oriental ornamentation, which she loathed.

When she first walked in with Gary Forrester, whom she had brought here from his hotel, it had been her intention to sit down and talk to him seriously, and at once, about their future. She found herself doing nothing of the sort. The moment Isman closed the door behind them, she threw off her coat, untied the scarf from her head, and walked straight into Gary Forrester’s arms.

For a moment he held her very close, so close that she could feel the frantic thudding of his heart against her breast. He began to kiss her with those slow, burning kisses which drove all reason from her mind. She responded with an ardour which matched his, and which always enchanted him. He felt this afternoon, as he felt after their first kiss, that this was the fulfilment of an ideal. Anna was the ideal woman and this was the perfect love which he had never experienced until Anna entered his life.

The ideal of perfectly-matched lovers and of a delightful camaraderie which ran parallel with it. He never even remembered the difference in their ages, unless she recalled it to him. For indeed, there was so much that was young and untouched in her, despite the eleven years of her marriage, that at times he felt he was almost older than she was. It was amazing to him that she should have remained so curiously virgin. It was, of course, due to the fact that she had never really loved Francis Rivington and her marriage had left her bored and unsatisfied.

Forrester had had other affairs. Trifling affairs at Cambridge—and the episodes of the usual boy who is gaining experience. And once he had thought himself genuinely in love with an American girl, out here. But even that affair had not matured.

With Anna, it was different. He had for her all the intense admiration of a young man for a charming woman older than himself, coupled with the fateful knowledge that she was the “right” person for him in every way; that without her, neither his success in work nor his life in any other respect could be complete.

When he drew his lips away from hers, he said:

“This is something like heaven, Anna.”

She leaned back in his arms a little, and, putting her hands on his shoulders, smiled at him.

His sheer good looks must always have appealed to her, she thought, even if she had never been attracted by him in any other way. But it was not purely a physical thing with her. There was a magnetism in Gary, which had won her the first time they had met. She was struck now as she had been struck then, by the force of his personality—sheer charm and a boy-like gaiety. Gary Forrester radiated a queer sort of happiness. Laughter had crinkled the corner of those long-shaped, greyish-green eyes of his. He laughed a lot. He had a sense of humour which she found most endearing; more especially, perhaps, because her husband had none. After the heavy “pomp and circumstance” of Francis who was a stickler for military convention and a snob, Gary seemed so refreshingly young and bohemian in his outlook, as well as catholic in his tastes. He did not care, he said, what people were, so long as he liked them. Yet, in spite of views so socialistic, he was the most fastidious person she had ever met.

He was clever, too. He had an intelligent, well-shaped head on which the thick brown hair grew vitally. Gary always found it difficult to keep that hair brushed down. Spending most of his time as he did in Upper Egypt, he was burnt a rich brown. He was not as tall as Francis, but he was of such slim build that he gave an impression of being thin. His hands were sensitive, nervous. Anna knew that behind that persistent gaiety of his, he was a person who gave much deep thought to life and put immense vigour into his work. To Anna, there was something marvellous about him—some mysterious creative quality which belongs essentially to the man who is the builder of bridges.

Pressing her hands against his shoulders, she gave a long sigh and shut her eyes.

“Oh, Gary, I do love you so!”

His face was grave, worshipping.

“I love you unbelievably, Anna,” he said. “Will you come to England with me tomorrow, my darling?”

She shook her head and smiled, shivering sensitively, as his hands passed over her shoulders down to her waist, holding her thus enclasped. She would have given much to answer him in the affirmative. To put Francis and this home, which had ceased to be home, behind her forever, and go with this adorable young lover of hers.

“No,” she said. “I can’t do that, Gary. But I’m going to join you in London next week.”

“How so, Anna?”

“Come sit down and let me tell you,” she said, and drew him towards the chesterfield, opposite the fire. “Francis is at the Turf Club, with the Colonel,” she added. “It’s only five now, he won’t be back until quarter-to-seven. That’s why I brought you along here.”

“I wouldn’t much mind if he did come back, Anna, and found us here like this. I’m so sick of all this hole-and-corner business. I’d like to tell Francis just where we all stand.”

“You know I’d like it too, but it can’t be done.”

“Why not, dearest?”

“I’m going to tell you why. Come here. …”

He sat down with her, keeping her hands in his.

“And I’m going to tell you again how I worship you, Anna,” he said, in a low voice.

Her fingers trembled in his.

“Let me try to be sane for a moment.”

He lifted each of her hands to his lips.

“Oh, my adorable darling. Do you love me as much as I love you?”

“More, I think. You don’t know what you mean to me, Gary. My dear, I’ve been unhappy and lonely for so long. I can’t believe yet that you’ve come into my life. I can’t believe there isn’t some lovely girl somewhere whom you were meant to love. Not me. Not a woman so much older and …”

“That’s not allowed, my sweet,” he broke in quickly. “You know that I haven’t the slightest interest in young girls, and there’s only one woman I love—Anna! Just Anna!”

He said that name in a hushed voice as though it were sacred to him. It made her immensely happy. And with a torrent of deep feeling for him rising within her, she banished that fear that was always with her, that he might suddenly come alive to the fact that she was not as young as she looked and that one day she would not even look it.

“You know,” she whispered, “that no other man in the world means anything to me. It’s only you. But, oh my God,” she added with a note of acute pain, “I wish I had met you before. I wish I’d never belonged to Francis. I can’t bear to feel that I’ve ever belonged to anybody but you.”

He understood the anguish of that cry. He was, himself, bitterly resentful of that other man’s possession and of the wasted years. But it did not for a fraction shake his determination to take her away from Rivington and marry her himself.

“One day you’ll forget all this, Anna,” he said. “Try not to let that side of it worry you, my darling. The past doesn’t matter to me. All that matters is the future—and that Francis should divorce you as soon as possible. That is, if you’re prepared to go through it all for me,” and he added with one of his quick, irresistible smiles, “though I’m pretty conceited to take it for granted that you will find it worth while.”

She pressed his hands tightly in hers.

“If you will always love me, Gary, I’d find any sort of hell worth while.”

“You’re wonderful,” he said huskily. “I couldn’t help loving you always.”

And he looked at her, thinking as he always thought when he was with her, how very beautiful she was, and there could never be another woman in his life.

Nobody would have thought that Anna Rivington was thirty-six. In those well-cut light tweeds, and blue wool jumper with a tuck-in scarf, her figure was as slim as a girl’s. She had that exquisitely pale, fine skin which tans gloriously but does not spoil. At the highest pitch of happiness, now that she was so much in love, there was a delicious sparkle and freshness about her. Hers was the distinctive beauty of smooth, black hair which she wore parted in the centre and pinned at the nape of her neck, and of large, haunting eyes which were dark, full of passionate sweetness. There was just the faintest network of lines about those eyes, the slightest touch of maturity in the curve of the reddened lips. A streak of silver in the black threads of hair behind her ears, scarcely visible unless looked for. But she was, to Garry Forrester, the incarnation of youthful beauty, combined with a rare tenderness which made him feel that he could never hurt Anna. Nevertheless she did not lack spirit. He knew that she could fight for herself, and certainly for anybody that she loved. But there was nothing hard about her and it was, he knew, that quality which made it difficult for her to smash up her marriage.

In the beginning he, too, had shrunk from the thought of taking away anothe. . .