Never Give All

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Pat is a lovely girl who learns after the honeymoon that only experience can teach a woman never to give all ? to a man. Also that there is a limit to the time a girl can love a faithless and irresponsible husband. The exotic holiday in Torremolinos is very different from life in a London flat ? and no job. ?Don?t nag?? Tim said. But there comes a time when Pat finds it difficult not to do so. And inevitably another better man turns up.

Release date: February 27, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

Pat Fleming, clad only in a bathing-suit, lay full length on the warm wooden veranda and tried to sleep.

The sun had moved from that portion of the veranda on which she was lying. But beyond her, in the garden, it shimmered hotly, soaking into the flower-beds, beating against the palms, shimmering on the white terraces and tumbling into the blue sea far below.

Pat Fleming lay very still. Her body looked long and slim, legs, shoulders and arms like smooth bronze in the green sheath of the costume, which had two green strips crossing the lovely back. When the costume came off there were two white ribbons on that brown back which made Pat laugh.

The big white house, with its blue shutters and stone-paved terraces, was quiet and peaceful in the drowsy noon-tide. Pat felt blissful and deliciously tired after swimming for half an hour with Jay. Jay was a former school friend and fellow-worker. Together they ran this villa in this Spanish paradise as a pension. They were, as a rule, full up all the year round with English or Americans, and sometimes with Spanish guests who liked the warmth of the south and the fact that this village, Santa Rosca, was near to the popular town of Malaga.

Pat had never regretted the impulse which had led her to approach Jay Rotherford, two years ago, and suggest that they should embark on this adventure. Neither of them had family ties, both having lost their parents within recent years. They were both, at the age of twenty-two, capable, energetic and anxious to make something out of life. Pat was undoubtedly the more domesticated of the two. Jay had an indolent streak and was pleasure-loving and a little improvident. But Pat was a steadying influence, and they got on well together. Each girl had had just sufficient capital to make this venture possible.

Spain was a cheap place to live in at the moment. Pat had learned commercial Spanish, and it had been her idea that they should come out to Malaga and look round. Then they had discovered Santa Rosca – an adorable fishing village on the Gibraltar road – and La Flora – this big house, half mansion, half farm, which was empty and waiting for a tenant.

Pat and Jay furnished it and announced that they were ready to take in paying guests. A few advertisements and some personal introductions and La Flora soon filled up. This spring the books were showing a profit. Not much, but enough to keep Pat and Jay going, and it was a glorious life out here in the perpetual sun.

A tinkling bell roused Pat from her siesta. She sat up quickly. The postman! The one daily excitement at La Flora. The postman came up on his bicycle, greeted her with a “Buenos tardes”, and handed her a telegram.

Pat read the wire and the next moment rushed into the villa and roused the quiet, dim interior with excited cries:

“Jay! Oiga! Jay!”

Jay Rotherford came out of the big cool salon which the guests used as a drawing-room. It would have been more truthful to say that she trailed out. She wore little else than a Spanish shawl with a long silken fringe which swept the floor. She was smoking a cigarette in a long holder and looked lovely, sleepy and beautiful. There was something of the Spaniard about Jay, with her black sleek head, warm colouring and large brown eyes. Pat, in contrast, looked startlingly fair, her brown waving hair touched with gold by the sun; frank sweet eyes as blue as the Malaga sea.

“What’s all the noise about, my dear?” asked Jay, and sighed because she had been roused from the depths of a new novel which one of the guests had brought out from England.

Pat tossed her the telegram.

“Tim’s coming.”

Jay’s red lips looked scornful. She shrugged brown shoulders, and the movement made the white shawl slither downward a little indecorously.

“That’s made you happy, I suppose?”

Pat found herself blushing a warm pink. She laughed in an embarrassed way.

“I suppose it has.”

“The young man is undoubtedly crazy,” said Jay.

“Because he likes me?” Pat laughed again.

“No, anyone would understand that, darling. But he’s crazy. He’s always broke. Always out of a job. And when he’s brokest he rushes out to Santa Rosca and proposes marriage to you. One of these days you’ll accept him.”

Pat was still a moment. She looked through the doorway at the sunlit garden and beyond to the lilac-shadowed mountains behind Malaga.

Many a true word spoken in jest! Yes, and what Pat felt about Tim Mallory wasn’t altogether a jest. Jay was right. One of these days she was going to accept Tim. She knew it. She liked him more every time she saw him. Unemployed, broke, feckless, whatever he was, she was drawn to him by that subtle attraction which flames into existence between men and women and cannot be accounted for.

Twice so far she had refused Tim’s offers of marriage. That was because she hadn’t been quite sure of herself, or him. Not because he had neither money nor prospects. She had not seen him for three months. He was supposed to have been working since Christmas. She had become more and more conscious of the fact that she missed him – his attractive personality and gay companionship. She remembered him with the secret tenderness of a woman who is falling in love – of a girl who despite a slim, boyish, modern figure and modern upbringing has rather an old-fashioned mind. There was a strong streak of romance in Pat. Jay called her Victorian and was sceptical because she hankered for a small home of her own where a husband and children would mean heaven and earth.

But then Jay was modern inside and out – and she wanted a good time above and beyond anything. Jay would never marry a man without money.

“I’d better go and tell Maria to prepare the green room,” said Pat. “I’m glad we’re quiet just at the moment. We’ve nobody except Dr. and Mrs. Horley, and they don’t interfere with us. We must ask Chris to come along and celebrate to-morrow night. Tim’s boat gets in at Gib. to-morrow morning. And he’s coming along on the bus.”

“Then he must be very broke,” said Jay, “otherwise he’d have a car.”

“He may be trying to economise,” said Pat loyally.

“Don’t make me laugh,” said Jay.

Then suddenly she gave a little scream and pulled the shawl over one brown naked shoulder.

“Heavens! Here’s Chris, himself. I must go and get some clothes on.”

“So must I,” said Pat with a rueful glance at her bathing-dress.

Just for an instant the two girls, with arms affectionately twined, watched the man who was strolling slowly along the avenue of palms which led to the villa. A very tall man in grey flannels, white shirt and Spanish straw hat perched on the side of his head. He wore the hat gracefully, like a Spaniard. He was very dark and good-looking and moved with unconscious grace.

The two girls watched him coming with very different emotions. In Pat’s blue eyes lay kindly welcome. She liked Christopher Rudd. For the last six months she had counted him a very good friend. He was a dramatist of some repute. Recently his health had given way and he had come out here and taken a villa in order to be quiet and write his new play.

He had speedily formed a friendship with the two English girls running the pension. He had made it fairly obvious that it was Pat whom he preferred. But she, appreciative though she was of his clever mind and his quiet sympathetic personality, had no more than a friendly interest in him. Pat was of the faithful type, and she had given her heart to Tim Mallory long before Christopher arrived on the scene.

In Jay’s dark eyes, however, lay more than the spark of friendship as she watched Christopher Rudd approach. She was in love with him – madly in love. His reticence, his love of nature and the quiet life, bored her, but he was rich – he had made a lot of money out of his last two plays. And Jay was intrigued because she knew that he saw through her. He had told her more than once that she was as selfish and vain as she was lovely, and that no sensible man would place his heart in her pretty hands. He treated her like an attractive child whom one must spoil but never take seriously.

Jay had firmly made up her mind that the clever and remote Christopher Rudd was going to take her seriously before she had finished. There were times when she was frankly jealous of the way in which he treated Pat. There was something quite different in his manner towards Pat … something of homage and tenderness. Had Pat cared for Christopher there might have been a serious rift in their friendship. But so long as Pat remained firmly attached to Tim Mallory, Jay was like a pleased kitten waiting hopefully for the saucer of cream.

Christopher neared the veranda. The two girls turned and raced upstairs to their room.

Jay took a long time dressing, anxious to look her best. So Pat, content to slip on an old blue linen dress and sandals, and without bothering about her face, was the first down to greet the visitor.

He swept off the straw hat and bowed like a Spaniard.

“Buenos! Donna Patricia.”

She smiled up at the thin brown face of the man – a tired face with a touch of melancholy about the eyes and lips. The black hair brushed straight back from the high temples was just flecked with grey. Christopher Rudd was thirty-two, and he looked forty. He had worked hard in his life, starting as a journalist and coping with ill-health, and only the recent years had brought success and the ease which accompanied it.

“Would you like some coffee?” Pat asked him. “Come in and have a cigarette, anyhow.”

“I’m smoking,” he said, and produced a cigar for her to see. “I won’t have coffee – I only came to ask you if you’d like to drive with me to Rhonda tomorrow.”

“It’s frightfully nice of you, Chris, but I’m afraid Tim’s coming, so I won’t leave La Flora.”

Christopher Rudd, following her into the villa, drew in his lips with a little moue of disappointment. So young Mallory was coming out again. He had no great cause to rejoice. Last Christmas when Mallory was here, Christopher had known what it was to be jealous – bitingly jealous for the first time in his life. He had had to watch Pat’s reactions to the boy, and knew them to be the reactions of a woman in love. Yes, Christopher knew that Pat was in love with Mallory and he didn’t think Mallory worth it. Moreover, Christopher wanted her for himself – had loved her and hoped to marry her almost from the beginning of their friendship out here.

It was the second time in his life that he had cared for a woman hopelessly. The first time sudden death had stripped hope from him with grim finality. And this time another man was in the way. He felt himself to be doomed where love was concerned. He had so much else in life – and love had been offered him from more than one quarter – but this one woman was to be denied him.

His dark, melancholy gaze rested wistfully upon her as he followed her into the salon. She was very lovely in his estimation – he loved the fine cleanliness of her figure, the pure moulding of the madonna face with the wide sweet eyes which were so startlingly blue against the tan. He loved the shape of the bronze-coloured head and the way she did her hair – looped over her ears and pinned in the nape of her neck. He admired her courage, the way she had tackled life and started this pension. He realised that it was Pat so much more than Jay Rotherford who was responsible for the success of its management. And something that was quiet and remote in her, something of his own passionate reserve, appealed to the very depths of him.

Why, why must a girl like Pat give her heart to a handsome boy who might make her happy for a while and desperately unhappy for a lifetime?

They sat down in the salon and he lit a cigarette for her.

“I’m sorry about Rhonda,” he said. “I would have liked you to come. I have a friend staying there – a fellow-writer who was at Oxford with me. I would have liked you two to meet.”

“I’m sorry, too,” said Pat, “but I’m a working woman, Chris, and I’ve got to prepare for my guest.”

He looked at the pale grey ash of his cigar and wondered a trifle ruefully if she would have turned down an invitation in order to be here were he coming to La Flora. Lucky devil, young Mallory.

“Perhaps some other time,” murmured Pat.

He had an inclination to lean forward, take her hand, lay it against his forehead and say:

“Any other time – all my time is yours if you want it.”

But instead he sat still, smoking his cigar and listening to her while she told him what had been happening up here lately. They expected to be full up for the week-end. The doctor and his wife were staying on. Teresa, the cook, had quarrelled with her lover and wept all the time she worked … various little anecdotes which she thought might interest him. He was, of course, always passionately interested in what she had to say, no matter how impersonal her conversation.

She suddenly awoke to the realisation that he looked very tired – the thin dark face had an almost exhausted look, as though his vitality had been drained from him.

“Are you working too hard, Chris?” she asked him. “You don’t look very fit.”

“I’m all right. Sat up a bit late last night. I do my best work at night, and I can’t always make up my sleep in the day.”

“You must go easy,” she said.

He was pleased at her consideration, but the softness in her eyes only hurt him. Pat could be so exquisitely maternal – and without meaning to be – so damnably disturbing to the peace of mind of a man who loved her.

He got up suddenly, walked to the long French windows and looked down at the glittering blue of the sea.

“I’d like to read what I’ve written of the new play to you some time, Pat,” he said.

“That would be great. Shall Jay and I come down or will you bring it up here?”

“I don’t want Jay,” he said almost irritably, and made haste to add: “I mean, Jay’s a dear, but she isn’t really interested in my work – wouldn’t understand it as you do.”

Pat glanced at him and immediately glanced away again, and sat fingering a pleat in her blue linen dress. She felt, intuitively, that Christopher Rudd was in love with her. It worried her because she liked and admired him so much and did not want anything to spoil their friendship. It was such a pity that Jay did not attract him. Jay who was so pretty and so intrigued with Christopher.

“I’d love to come down by myself one evening and hear you read the play,” she said.

He turned to her eagerly.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“Buenos!” said the rich, throaty voice of Jay from the doorway. She came into the salon looking marvellous in an orange silk dress, her bare brown feet in high-heeled shoes of bright green leather. She wore an orange flower behind her ear, and the effect was startlingly attractive.

Christopher greeted her, smiling.

“You grow more Spanish every day, my child.”

“Wait till you see how I use the castanets and dance the tango!” she boasted, and moved with her swaying walk across the floor to him, hands on her hips, red lips whistling a tango tune.

The writer in Christopher found excellent copy in this pretty conceited child who was the same age as Pat Fleming and yet seemed so much younger. But the man in him did not respond to her allure. He paid her an idle compliment, then made some excuse to depart. He must get on with his work. Perhaps later they could all meet in the village café for a drink.

After he had gone Jay was silent, even sullen. Pat looked at her anxiously.

“Are you fed up about something?”

Jay’s red lips twisted.

“With nothing in particular – only life in general. Christopher Rudd makes it so obvious which one of us he comes to see.”

The colour surged into Pat’s face.

“Oh, my dear—”

“What’s it matter?” broke in Jay, clicking a little green heel against the polished floor. “Ah, well! Here come the Horleys. I must go and tell Maria to put tea on the veranda, as there is no wind this afternoon.”

Pat looked regretfully after the slim, orange-clad figure of her friend. It was all very embarrassing and difficult … she knew quite well that Jay had a secret passion for Christopher Rudd, and that Chris came to see her, Pat, she could not deny. It made things difficult in more ways than one. She did not want anything to come between her and Jay. They had always been such excellent friends. They were cast in entirely different moulds, but they were fond of each other. Pat hated the idea that Jay should be jealous. Why, why should fate delight in constructing these triangular dramas?

Then the thought of Tim drove the problem of Jay and Christopher from Pat’s mind. She was filled with a warm secret satisfaction. It would be wonderful to have Tim out here again. Her imagination, sharpened on the steel of her growing love for him, visualised him perfectly. Tim, who was so slim and beautifully built, with a wild Irish streak in him and all the witchery of Ireland in those grey-blue black-lashed eyes of his. Tim, who had a cheeky boyish face with a wide laughing mouth and short nose which threatened to be retroussé.

Tim who could be a maddening mixture of indolence and vital energy, of ice and fire, of weakness and strength. Tim who knew just how to pull at a woman’s heart-strings with that charming, caressing voice and manner of his; Tim who had so many graces that his faults were easily forgiven him.

And Pat had always forgiven Tim – anything. Even the fact that he could never keep a job because he was so unpunctual and so thoughtless and always in the clouds, dreaming absurdly, when he should have been settling down to a mundane job.

Last Christmas Tim and Pat had had a few serious moments together which had been a revelation to her; shown her a serious Tim who was ready to adore her and kiss the hem of her dress. A lover anxious to amuse and please her and who understood all the silly things that a woman asks of life and the man she loves.

No other man had ever begun to appeal to Pat in such a way. She admired and liked Christopher Rudd, for instance. But she was a little afraid of him. Of Tim she could never be afraid. He was only a year older than herself, and in some respects he seemed younger. Had she but known it, half her feeling for him was maternal. Purely maternal, that desire to gather him in her arms and pull his handsome, impudent boy’s face down to her own, and laugh and cry over him in turns.

The memory of the lonely man, writing there in his villa, waiting for her to come to him, completely escaped Pat for the rest of the day. Tomorrow Tim would be here – that was all she could think of. She was oblivious even of Jay’s dissatisfaction, so Jay continued to sulk for the rest of the day.

The April day was gloriously warm and sunny when Tim Mallory leapt off the little bus which brought him along the winding white road from Gibraltar to Santa Rosca. The bus rattled on its way into Malaga, scattering a herd of goats to the right and left.

Tim, carrying a suitcase, walked down the narrow path which led to the sea and the wrought-iron gates of La Flora.

He was met at the gateway by Pat. Breathless, pink, starry-eyed, she advanced towards him. Very special care had Pat taken with her appearance this afternoon. She was wearing exactly what she knew Tim liked: dark blue beach pyjamas and a thin fleecy white sle. . .