Never Say Goodbye

by Claire Lorrimer

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

At 17, Scilla's world fell apart when her first love, Dallas, returned to Australia without even saying goodbye. Ten years later she moves to Libya to make a fresh start as nanny to her sister's children. Her life, at long last, is moving on. But Benghazi was the last place she expected to hear an Australian accent...

Release date: April 10, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

The girl sat on the huge concrete block that marked the furthermost point of the Mole. Around her on three sides the brilliant transparency of the blue Mediterranean swirled and gurgled gently in and out of the rocks. A light breeze ruffled the chestnut curls that surrounded a thin gamine face. She might have been seventeen or twenty-seven; in the olive-green swim-suit she had the appearance of a schoolgirl and yet the eyes that stared out across the water were not the eyes of a young girl … there was too much unhappiness in their depth, too much introspection.

The hazel eyes looked for a moment at a tiny sailing boat that was tacking slowly towards her … or rather towards the little harbour that the Mole afforded. It seemed to be moving very slowly and she guessed that if the breeze lessened at all, the occupants would find themselves becalmed. But her thoughts were not really on the boat … they were on herself.

She had been in Benghazi for two months now. It seemed much longer since she had left England behind and flown out to Libya with her sister Kathie and the children. At the time, she had felt a lifting of her spirits, an expectancy, a hope for the future that in this moment of self-analysis appeared rather stupid.

You’re a fool, Scilla! she told herself with feeling. You have always been a fool!

Kathie, had she heard that unspoken thought, would have chided her with her usual common sense and honesty. Scilla could imagine Kathie’s warm reproachful voice saying:

‘That’s absurd, Scilla. You’ve far more intelligence than I have, and anyway, you’re only a kid … a baby. You can’t expect to go through life without making some mistakes.’

But she wasn’t a baby now, Scilla told herself bitterly. She was nearly twenty-seven and old enough to be able to decide what she wished to make of her life. At seventeen she had decided and made the mistake that only later had she realised was so drastic and so irredeemable.

‘I won’t think about the past! I’ve come out here to a new life! I’m going to enjoy myself … be happy!’ she thought with a fierceness of purpose that to Kathie, who knew her so well, would have betrayed the fear and doubt with which she was viewing the prospect.

The girl watched the boat drawing closer and could see now the two men who were sailing her … tall, bronzed by the May sun and looking from a distance a little like Greek gods silhouetted against the amazing blue of the sky.

Her attention waned again and she thought of Bill … dark, sunburned as the two yachtsmen, undoubtedly handsome and already in love with her; Bill, who was taking her tonight to the Officers’ Club for dinner and, because it was Saturday night, afterwards to dance. She knew she would flirt a little with him and enjoy herself … enjoy the flattery of his affection for her; knew that Kathie and her nice brother-in-law Pete would be looking on pleased and happy with her enjoyment which really they had planned for her. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why she could not really take Bill very seriously. He was so obviously the perfect ‘tonic’ that Kathie thought she needed. She could recall her elder sister’s words when it had first been suggested that Scilla accompany her to Benghazi.

‘It would be so wonderful for me, Scilla. You could give me a hand with the children and we’d be company for one another. Besides, you know you’re fed up with that silly modelling job of yours and you’re thin as a rake. Mother was only saying the other day that you ought to take a long holiday somewhere in the sun. Do come, Scilla. It will be a new life. We’ll find some handsome young army officers to amuse you and you’re almost sure to have a good time. Pete says the unmarried chaps will be crying out for girls to ‘date’. It isn’t as if you have anything to keep you in England.’

True, there wasn’t anyone.

‘There’s my job!’ she had argued feebly.

Kathie just grinned. Both knew that Scilla had taken up modelling only because she was bored doing nothing. The allowances given to them by their wealthy car-manufacturing father were more than adequate for all their demands. In fact, they were more than most people nowadays had to live on.

Kathie, good-natured, easy-going, placid and pliable, took what her father offered her with gratitude and an easy acceptance. Scilla, highly-strung, emotional, sensitive, could not. Perhaps it was because of the interference that her parents had permitted themselves in the past. That interference might have been warranted when she was only seventeen. But as she had grown up, she had realised how wrongly they had judged her … and for her; and her independence of thought and deed had become an obsession. For that reason she had got herself a job and refused to draw the allowance her father still paid with obstinate regularity into her untouched bank account.

Kathie knew this and, guessing Scilla’s reluctance to go with her to Libya to be based partly on the fact that she would be forced to accept financial help once more from their parents, she quickly suggested that Scilla would, in fact, be doing her a good turn if she could see her way to be employed by her as nanny or governess to her nephew and niece.

‘I’d have a hard job to find someone suitable at a moment’s notice and it would be a risk taking out some strange girl. If she wasn’t satisfactory I’d have to pay her fare back home. Besides, Pete and I are none too keen on the idea of a stranger living in with us and we’ll have to have someone. Now Pete is a full colonel we’ll have to do some entertaining and be out a bit. Do come, Scilla darling!’

Because of this, because she was deeply devoted to Kathie and because she had nothing at all to keep her in England, Scilla had come. Anything would be better than staying in London, brooding over the ghastly mess she had made of her life … regretting the decision of nine years ago …

So long ago, yet it did not seem that long since the war had ended; since the day Dallas had sailed home to Australia in the giant troopship that unknown to him she had watched leave port, taking her heart with it. Dallas … Dallas … She still loved him!

Her thin hands clenched together round the bare, brown knees. Her eyes blinked with tears that were out of place in this calm, lazy May afternoon with the sea sparkling brilliantly and far behind her at the Sailing Club the excited happy shouting of the kids playing and splashing about in the paddling pool.

She brushed them away rapidly before they could fall, a little incredulous that she could still weep for a love lost so long ago. Dallas had never written … never tried to see her again. She would not even have known he was leaving England for his native Australia if a fellow officer in his squadron had not written a friendly word of farewell mentioning that he and Dallas would be leaving on the Windrush and thanking her for the hospitality she and her family had shown them both in the past.

‘If he’d really loved me, he would not have given in so easily,’ she told herself for the hundredth, or was it thousandth, time. ‘Such a very very little persuasion would have been necessary to bring me to my senses. I was so young, Dallas … and you were the first man I had ever loved. How was I to know it would last for always? How was I to know that it was love and not infatuation as Mother and Dad said? How was I to know that I wouldn’t forget … couldn’t forget when they promised me I would? It you’d really loved me, you’d have known deep down inside you that I could not ever change.’

Yet she had doubted herself … and because of that she could not blame him for her own weakness. She could only despair that with his seven years’ superiority he had not stood firmer for them both instead of accepting, as he had done, her parents’ wishes.

With a little sigh of resignation, she looked out to sea again and saw the sailing boat almost opposite her as it changed course and swung in towards the Club. She recognised one of the men but the second, acting crew, had his back to her and she did not see who it was. The wind had freshened a little and she felt it against her body, still wet from her swim, and shivered. Then she stood up and started to clamber back along the Mole to the changing rooms. Soon it would be tea-time and she must get back to the flat and help Kathie with the children.

She had just completed her brief dressing and pushed her slim arms into a white cardigan when she heard the men’s voices outside the door of the changing room. For a moment her heart stopped and then it began to beat at double its pace. It could not be … and yet the accent was unmistakable.

‘I’m going crazy!’ she told herself as she sought for and feverishly lit a cigarette. Benghazi was not the kind of place where she might meet an Australian grazier! But nor was it the place where one heard an Australian accent. There were many strange tongues in this tiny country, English, Scots, Greek, Italian, French, German, American … but not Australian.

Reassured that she had made a mistake, she pushed open the changing-room door and entering the Mess walked almost directly into a table at which the two men she had seen in the sailing boat were being served tea. One of them was Dallas.

The blood rushed to her cheeks, then receded quickly leaving her deathly pale. Robert Hendry, the young Federal Government lawyer, stood up to greet her and she could not walk by. Then his companion looked up and after a moment’s intake of breath, said:

‘Great heavens, Scilla … you!’

‘You two know each other? Sit down and have a cupper with us, Scilla. We’ve just been out for a sail … bit slow … no wind …’

‘I was on the end of the Mole … I saw you!’

Somehow the words had come out and made sense. Somehow she was sitting down at the table, Mohammed bringing the tea Robert Hendry had called for. Her eyes, however, would not be controlled so easily and were still fastened unbelievingly on Dallas. He, too, was staring at her, his eyes fathomless, unreadable.

Perhaps sensing that all was not quite straightforward, Robert said to break the silence:

‘Queer world! Always running into people I know out here. Ran into a chap the other day who I’d known years ago in training camp. Couldn’t remember his name or where I’d seen him but he recognised me, too. We thrashed it out and found it was twelve years ago we shared the same Nissen hut for a fortnight!’

‘It must be all of nine years since I last saw Scilla!’

The Australian leaned back with easy grace in the basket chair. Everything about him was easy but assured and somehow graceful. No longer the boy Scilla remembered but a man of thirty-three, he seemed to her to have grown even taller than the six feet she recalled. His face had lost its smoothness and was deeply lined round his eyes, but they had not changed. They were startlingly grey eyes which could be translucent and gentle like calm water, or hard and unreadable and a little frightening.

‘If that’s the way you want it, Scilla, then there’s nothing more for me to say except goodbye!’ Words she had forgotten came crowding back into her mind, confusing her.

‘You’ve … changed!’ she said at last, breathlessly.

‘Anno Domini!’ he replied with an easy laugh. ‘We all get older, I guess!’

‘Except Scilla! She looks like a school kid!’ Robert Hendry said admiringly.

‘I expect I’ve changed, too!’ Scilla said with difficulty. ‘I was seventeen when I last saw Dallas!’

‘Well, I expect you two have a lot to mull over,’ Robert said tactfully. ‘I must be pushing off anyway.’

‘I’ll have to go, too!’ Dallas said, standing up abruptly. ‘No doubt we shall run into each other again, Scilla. You must tell me sometime how you manage to be in this tiny corner of the world. Thanks for the ride, Bob. So long, you two!’

White as death beneath her sun-tan, Scilla watched him disappear through the gate out of sight.

‘What’s eaten him!’ Robert said with a look of surprise. ‘I call that pretty abrupt!’

Scilla bit her lip.

‘I’m no doubt responsible. As a matter of fact … it’s rather hard to explain, Robert … we were engaged to be married once. We broke it off … that is, I broke it off.’ Her voice trailed away.

The young lawyer whistled softly.

‘Now I begin to understand. I don’t imagine that fellow much enjoyed being jilted. Never knew such a proud man in all my life. Funny you hadn’t run into him before now, Scilla. He’s been down here at the Club several times … must have just missed each other, I suppose. Matter of fact, he’s going great guns at the moment with our glamour-girl, Nancy. You know the one I mean?’

Scilla shook her head, her heart like a ton weight in her throat choking her.

‘The dark woman with the Jane Russell figure … or perhaps that’s a bit catty … she really is a stunner. I just don’t happen to care for the type myself, but I can see what Dallas sees in her. In any case, she’s one of the few eligible girls around here … except your sweet self!’

‘I know who you mean!’ Scilla said suddenly. ‘She is stunning. But I thought she was Mrs Harold!’

‘Was, but not is. There was a divorce in England about six months ago. The husband went to Egypt and she stayed on here … has a good job with the Embassy. Frankly, I think Dallas was the main reason she has stayed on here. Benghazi isn’t really her cup of tea … not sophisticated enough if you ask me. Still, it must have its compensations, viz Dallas, or she wouldn’t be here.’

‘What … what is he doing here?’

‘Don’t you know? But of course not. He’s over with the F.A.O. … Food and Agricultural Organization. Now much as I love you, my sweet, I must depart homewards. My better half will be wondering what I’m doing. Incidentally, when are you coming round to see us again?’

‘Soon!’ Scilla promised, for she liked Robert and was even more friendly with his young attractive wife, Isobel. ‘I’ll come with you!’ she added as Robert stood up. ‘I promised Kathie to see to the children’s tea and it’s nearly five now.’

They parted at the road running north around the harbour, Scilla crossing over the piece of waste land that fronted the large block of flats which, for the time being, constituted home. She ran up the stairs, opened the front door swiftly and, as quietly as she could and without Kathie or the children hearing her, slipped into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.

She stood with her back to it, her hands pressed against her cheeks, her eyes wide and with an expression of acute pain. It was as if half her mind was unable to credit the happenings of the last hour … that Dallas, Dallas, should be here in Benghazi was an event momentous enough in itself. That she should have seen him, sat with him, heard his voice … not the voice she remembered, saying, ‘Darling, I love you so much … marry me, please marry me!’ but a cool, unhurried, hard voice saying, ‘Good heavens, Scilla, you!’ as if she were the last person he wanted to meet again.

Of course, it’s probably true! she told herself with sudden understanding. She couldn’t have expected him to stay in love with her for the nine absurdly long years they had been apart. And yet because she had never really stopped loving him, she had hoped for at least some sign of pleasure in seeing her again.

The girl moved across to her bed and sat down as if she were suddenly too weary to support her own slight weight. She had lived so long in her dreams of the past … dreams of the days when she and Dallas had first met and fallen so deeply in love, that even now she found it hard to believe that this was now, the present, that she could see and talk to Dallas again … not the romantic young airman, which was her memory of him, but Dallas, a man of thirty-three, different and yet somehow unmistakably the same man she had once loved as a young man.

The door opened suddenly and Kathie came in. Seeing Scilla on the bed, she gave a little start of surprise and her round, rather plump face crinkled in perplexity.

‘Darling, I thought you were out swimming! Whatever are you doing here? I came to see if Dina’s dressing-gown had got into your cupboard. Scilla, is anything wrong?’

The whiteness of her young sister’s face and the tense attitude of her body had given Kathie cause for anxiety as well as surprise.

‘I’ve just seen Dallas!’ Scilla said flatly.

‘You’ve just … what did you say, Scilla? Are you mad? It can’t have been … not Dallas …’ Her voice trailed away as she saw the brief shake of Scilla’s bronze curls.

Kathie Henshaw drew in her breath and walked slowly across the tiled floor to the window, where she stared out across the harbour. This, if it were really fact, was a dreadful mishap, to put it mildly. None knew better than she, who had always had Scilla’s confidence, what this must mean to her sister … moreover what fresh unhappiness might be lying in wait for her. Surely … surely it could not be true! Dallas Poulten had gone back to Australia after the war to work on his father’s sheep farm. What could he possibly be doing here in Benghazi? It was incredible.

Her mind shot back to the past … to the last time she had set eyes on the young Australian pilot … how many years ago now? Nine? Ten? She had been the unfortunate one who had had to deliver Scilla’s last unhappy letter to Dallas. She knew every word of it and could remember it now as clearly as she could remember the lost, angry bitter look on the young man’s face.

Darling Dallas,

I believe Mummy and Daddy are right about us … we ought not to rush into marriage. I do love you … I shall always love you but can’t you wait a few years … until I am nineteen at least? I think Mummy and Daddy will eventually give their consent if only you could wait. I don’t doubt my love for you and I don’t really doubt yours for me but if we do truly both care, then two years’ wait is not so terrible. But we’ve talked this over so many times, haven’t we? You, I know, feel that I would marry you and come to Australia with you when you go if I loved you as much as I believe I do. I truly think that my love would weather a separation of two years and I should have thought that if you loved me as much as you say, then you would rather wait than lose me. If you change your mind, Dallas, before you go home, then I shall be the happiest girl in the world. If not, then it is goodbye. I do love you, so very much, but I can’t marry you yet.

Ever your own,

Scilla.

And the few weeks that remained before Dallas was to return to Australia were a nightmare Kathie would never forget; Scilla, desperate, hugging the telephone, watching every post; her mother and father reiterating for the thousandth time, ‘If that’s the way he is, you’re well rid of him … he doesn’t love you enough to wait … he’s not our kind … you know in your own heart, Scilla, that any reasonable man would wait … he’s just a rough, uncouth Australian from the backs or whatever you call them …’

If only her parents, well-intentioned no doubt, could have refrained from making those remarks and left Scilla alone. They had both seemed utterly unaware of the dreadful torment their words caused their daughter. Slowly but surely as the weeks went by, Scilla’s spirits drooped as hope waned. At one time, she might have sunk her pride and written again to Dallas, perhaps phoned him. But her mother’s warnings made an issue of his silence which gradually influenced her younger daughter to the extent of believing at least part of what she said so many times: ‘If he loves you, he’ll wait … he’ll get in touch with you. If not, you’re better rid of him.’ So it developed into that single issue … if Dallas really loved her, he would not let her go so easily.

Then the letter came from Dallas’ close friend saying they were sailing next day. It was the end. Privately, Kathie had felt relieved that at least the waiting was over for her pathetically distressed younger sister. She had hoped, as her mother and father did, that it would be a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. And, indeed, for a little while it did seem as if Scilla had picked up her spirits and belief in the future. She no longer mooned round the house with tear-swollen eyes … no longer went off for long walks on her own, coming back late to meals and leaving her food untouched. Instead, she began to talk, a l. . .