The Night is Thine

by Patricia Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Everything had to be arranged well in advance for Lucy's husband - even their love making. But now she was in love with Geoff - himself married to a hopeless alcoholic - and was living through all the joy and agony that only forbidden love can cause.

Release date: January 1, 2015

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

SHE looked very young and peaceful, the individual lines of her face smoothed to a childlike innocence. The lashes were dark against the marble pallor of her skin; the mouth softened as if in sleep, the lips only faintly pink. She looked utterly peaceful.

‘But why?’ Geoffrey asked himself, surprise uneasily replacing the momentary horror the sight of her had given him. ‘Why should she want to kill herself?”

At the same instant, Lucy’s mother said tearfully:

“She has so much to live for, Geoffrey. How could she?”

There was condemnation as well as bewilderment in the voice. She was the type who would disapprove of suicides on principle. The sight of her only daughter lying there in the strange hospital bed must have been a pretty ghastly shock.

“Lucy – oh, Lucy!” The cry was silent. If Mrs. Delavue had not been beside him, he would have dropped to his knees beside the bed and wept.

He walked across to the window and stared out across the hospital grounds. Rain was falling in a steady, slanting sheet. A nurse hurried across the grass, her scarlet cloak a flash of colour in the grey drabness of the February afternoon.

“Even the sky is weeping,” he thought, and was suddenly ashamed. This was no time to be pleased with himself for a poetic quotation.

He wanted suddenly to tell her – see if she would laugh. Her sense of humour could always come to the fore in emergencies – but this time he couldn’t test her reactions. There was nothing funny about all this. And even if she wanted to laugh, she couldn’t.

“I must go!” This time he spoke aloud. He couldn’t stay here in this antiseptic, impersonal room any longer. He wanted a drink. He wanted life – company – noise – anything that would drive away these morbid thoughts and the fear that this time he had lost her for good. There was still a chance – a faint hope. The doctor had said it depended on Lucy’s will to live.

“I must go,” he said again.

“Thank you for coming, Geoffrey. It was nice of you.”

Mrs. Delavue might have been a hostess seeing out a guest.

“If she knew,” Geoffrey thought, “she wouldn’t be so bloody polite.”

But then she didn’t know anything. If she had been the kind of mother in whom a daughter could confide, Lucy might not be here now.

They shook hands stupidly, like strangers. The woman’s were soft, white and beautifully manicured. Lucy’s were soft and …

“I’ll tell Clive you called.”

For God’s sake don’t do that. But he checked the words in time and said nothing. He gave another quick glance at the bed and the whole situation became suddenly nightmarish. It wasn’t Lucy lying there … it was all wrong, all impossible, all unreal.

“Goodbye!” he said abruptly, and went out of the room.

The dream-like quality persisted as he went down the stairs. Could Lucy somehow know he’d been with her? Lost to the world. Unconscious. Lost for ever to him. No. Lucy would be in the flat waiting when he got back! Her face not deathly pale at all but glowing, excited. She would say, breathlessly:

“I’ve got two whole days, Geoffrey – two days. Clive has gone to Bath for a conference. Two days – two nights …”

A long time ago she would have been quiet, nervous, ill-at-ease; worried about Clive finding out; worried about the children; worried about a thousand little tell-tale things which might have led to discovery.

But that phase was long past. Now, there was a whole-hearted abandon, a complete lack of consideration for anyone but himself. No, “now” was already in the past. Lucy wouldn’t, couldn’t be waiting for him. Lucy had wanted to put an end to her life, to her warm exciting beauty, to loving, living, and laughter.

“A double whisky – with water.”

The bar was nearly empty. He took the drink to a corner table where he had so often sat with her. Another pub would have been better – one they had never been to together. This place was full of memories, full of ghosts.

He downed the whisky and signalled the barman to bring the same again. Maybe he should get drunk. Drunks don’t think, can’t remember, don’t torture themselves with futile questions.

“Oh, Lucy, why? Was it my fault?”

He was still painfully sober.

‘ARTISTIC, I suppose!’ Clive said to himself as he sat in the train going home. ‘Same type as Lucy – uncontrolled and unreliable.’

He had been amazed when Geoffrey had suddenly burst into the hospital room, half drunk and demanding to see Lucy. At first he had refused to believe she was dead.

“But she wasn’t dead when I saw her two hours ago. She can’t be dead. I won’t let her die … Lucy … Lucy …”

Clive flushed with embarrassment when he remembered the way the poor fellow had flung himself on the bed and covered Lucy’s hand with kisses. Thank Heaven his mother-in-law and the nurses were not in the room at the time.

Well, at least it had given him, Clive, the chance to hand over Lucy’s letter. Fenn had torn it open and read it and somehow it had calmed him at once. He was white as death and trembling but he had obviously regained control when he said:

“Thanks – I’m sorry!” and blundered out of the room.

Clive stared out of the window of the train for a moment and then glanced at his watch. Six-fifteen. Running late again. He felt a return of the acute irritation he’d suffered ever since the inquest this morning.

“Broken heart!” As if anyone died of a broken heart! he thought for the hundredth time. That’s what came of coroners in their dotage still on the job. Sentimental old fool – all that jabbering about the little boy’s death and ‘the young mother’s despair” … It ought to have been obvious enough from Lucy’s letters to him and to her mother that she was perfectly sane, perfectly calm, and that she had taken her own life deliberately. His own evidence should have made that clear.

“Mr. Morglade, do you know of any reason at all why she should have taken her life?”

Well, that had been a bit tricky to answer. There was no reason – it was just one of Lucy’s irrational ideas.

“Were you happily married?”

Of all the impertinence! Of course they’d been happily married until Simon’s illness; then Lucy had begun to act very strangely, shutting herself away from him and from her own small daughter.

He’d taken good care not to mention Fenn’s name. One of the few sensible things poor Lucy had done was to keep Geoffrey’s name out of it. Odd he hadn’t been at the inquest. Dr. Parry had been there, of course. Fortunately he’d only been asked about Lucy’s health and he hadn’t had a chance to air his views on the Morglades’ separation.

Clive felt a faint tinge of uneasiness. Maybe if he’d taken her back Lucy might not … but her letter had made that quite clear; ‘never, never think that you are responsible,’ she’d written. No, she knew what she was about. The boy’s death had preyed on her mind – she’d been unable to get over it and no doubt imagined she never would do so.

The train pulled up at the station. Clive got out and drove quickly home. Ingrid opened the front door and he saw at once that she had been crying.

“Now, my dear, you must pull yourself together. Tears won’t help poor Mrs. Morglade now. Besides, it’s all over.”

Ingrid said, sniffing:

“She was always so goot to me, so kind. Always I have very much for her a likeness.”

“You mean ‘I always liked her very much’, Clive mechanically corrected her English as he hung up his coat and went into the drawing-room.

“I have the fire lit – it almost is like winter, no? Tonight it feels for the first time Frostig”.

“Chilly!” Clive supplied the English word as he stood with his back to the blaze. He was very pleased with his progress in German. It had been a clever idea of Ingrid’s that they should teach each other. He’d never been much good at French and it was nice to be able to speak some foreign language.

Ingrid brought him his customary glass of sherry. She said:

“And the inquest, Mr. Morglade. How was this?”

Clive frowned, remembering once again the stupidity of the old Coroner.

“Died of a broken heart,” he muttered. “Of all the stupid things to say – as if anyone could die of a broken heart.”

“And what is this – this broken heart? Mrs. Morglade is all the time ill with her heart?”

“No, no, no!” Clive said, sipping his sherry and beginning to relax. “It is another of our strange sayings – nothing to do with heart attacks. Now let me have a look at our English-German dictionary.”

Ingrid fetched it obediently from the side table.

Clive thumbed through the pages and then jabbed with one finger at the word he wanted.

“Here it is, Ingrid, gebrochen. And see here …”, he pointed triumphantly at the line below – “Broken hearted – mit gebrochenen herzen.”

“Ach, ja – I understand!” Ingrid nodded.

Clive put down the dictionary and gave her a friendly smile.

“I’ll just pop up and say goodnight to Diane, then dinner, and afterwards we’ll go through the inquest word for word. It should be quite instructional for you, Ingrid, and for me too. Take the word ‘coroner’, for instance – I’m sure you’ve never heard that one before. ‘Unsound mind’ – that’s another typically English phrase …”

He drew a deep breath. He felt something that was very near to sheer contentment. He finished his sherry and, turning his back on the past, he went upstairs.

SHE sat by the telephone in her bedroom, waiting for it to ring. She held a nail-file in her right hand but wasn’t using it. The clock on the table by Clive’s bed made a little “ting” as the big hand inched to the figure twelve. It was seven o’clock. This time twelve hours ago the alarm had rung. One of the tiny, unimportant things she noticed while she sat waiting for Geoffrey to telephone was the way the clock always “ting’d” although the alarm had not been wound up since exhausting itself in the morning.

The children were in bed, asleep. Diane slept on her face, the fair crisp curls, so like Clive’s, hiding her chubby five-year-old face from sight. Simon slept on his back in the same way that his mother did – his soft dark hair tumbling over his high, moist forehead. Geoffrey thought he looked like her … but Clive had often declared that Simon took after his paternal grandmother.

Her nerves began to grow taut as the minutes ticked by. Maybe this was one of the evenings when Geoff wouldn’t ring. There was never any guarantee – or promise.

“After all, darling, I might be anywhere at the time and I don’t want you to be disappointed at the last moment if I can’t ring.”

She sighed, remembering the tinge of impatience in Geoff’s deep, attractive voice. He hated being pinned down. As if she wouldn’t be disappointed in any event! As if she wouldn’t live through each day until seven o’clock, at first happily anticipating, then with mounting excitement eagerly awaiting; next would come the doubting; and finally, there would be the dreadful downward plunge of disappointment. Or the surge of paralysing relief.

Reason told her to get busy. When you were busy you didn’t feel so wretched. But she’d already put the casserole in the oven for Clive’s dinner; the table was laid, drinks put out, the cold sweet, a lemon mousse, in the fridge. There was nothing more to be done – except wait.

She stood up and walked over to her dressing-table. Her rather square, boyish hands picked up a hairbrush. She began to brush the soft dark waves of her hair with slow, steady movements. From the mirror, her eyes stared back at her, glittering, darker than mere brown. Geoff often hummed ‘Two lovely black eyes’ when he was in a teasing mood.

“Ring – ring, for God’s sake! I need to hear your voice, Geoff, Geoff …”

She started violently. The telephone shrilled. She sprang up to lift the receiver.

“Is Mrs. Morglade there, please?”

“Geoff, darling, yes – it’s me!”

Relief was so great, happiness, so intense, that she couldn’t even remember her grammar.

“Lucy! Darling, I’ve only got a few minutes so I’m afraid it can’t be a nice long chat. I just wanted to know how you were.”

Her hand was leaving damp moist marks on the telephone receiver. The intense happiness and relief was fading. Only minutes – just a few moments of time – and he’d be gone again. She couldn’t think of anything to say. Yet all day, she had been storing up a dozen small things to tell him.

“Lucy?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“Love me?”

She closed her eyes, willing his image into her mind. She saw a tall, rather heavily-built man, broad-shouldered but with a youthful figure narrowing down to long athletic legs. She saw eyes the colour of sherry with dark curling lashes that should have belonged to a girl; a strong, slightly-Roman nose and a wide sensuous mouth The whole picture was that of an unremarkable man in his thirties, not exactly handsome but oddly attractive. No, terribly, terribly attractive. Did she love him? Was this frantic need of him which she felt born of love or infatuation? Or just sex?

“I wish you were here, with me, now.” Her voice was husky.

“When you talk like that, you do something to me, Lucy. My God, I wish I could be with you. When are you coming up to Town? When shall I see you again?”

“I might manage next week. Clive has a board meeting and he usually stays at his Club afterwards. I could tell him I was going to stay with a school friend.”

“You mean, you can manage a night?” He sounded surprised as well as pleased.

“I can’t promise – but I’ll try.”

“Well, let me know, darling. I’ll have to go now. I’ll ring you again in a day or two.”

Silence hung between them. She knew she should let him go without a fuss. He hated her to say “Oh, Geoff, just a few minutes longer!” He’d explained at great length that if he said he had to go it was because something really urgent was pending, and that she must not make things awkward for him. “I’ll never try to detain you when you say you have to go.” But that somehow was different. The only occasions on which she had to ring off suddenly were those when Clive came home in the middle of a call, or if one of the children ran unexpectedly into the room, or Ingrid, the German mother’s-help, came in.

“Lucy? You do love me, don’t you?”

“Yes! Where are you going, Geoff!”

“Theatre. And I really must rush. ’Bye for now, darling. I do love you.”

She kept the receiver to her ear long after they had been disconnected. It was childish – not the kind of behaviour for a woman of twenty-eight – a married woman …

She went back to her mirror and powdered her nose. She saw herself in a sharp instant of reality through Geoff’s eyes and knew that she was pretty; that her figure was good; that the dusty-pink silk dress was her colour. It was one of Geoff’s favourites. He’d told her, laughingly, it was terribly “sexy” – “does something to you – the way it clings, I think – or maybe it’s the colour.”

But Clive wouldn’t see it that way when he came home tonight. He wouldn’t notice what she wore provided it was conventional and suited the occasion.

She went downstairs and poured herself a drink, taking it across to the window seat in the bay and looking out over the garden. It was strange how a woman could be two people … a bit like a chameleon, changing colour to suit the beholder – not only as a form of self-defence. Clive had no interest in her as a woman. With him she was remote, formal, polite and chic because he expected these things of his wife; a little nondescript also, because that was what he wanted from the mother of his children. But never, never a real woman. Only with Geoff did she become one-hundred-per-cent female – aware of the shape of her body, of her smooth soft skin and long supple line of hips and legs.

She stood up abruptly and began to rearrange the mauve-pink lilac in the tall green glass vase. It wouldn’t do to start thinking this way right now. Any moment Clive would be home and she must appear cool and remote – not tense with unspent passion.

For the hundredth time she took up battle with herself. This – this torment of her senses which only Geoff could evoke could not be love. She didn’t love him. She could not afford to do so. There was no long-term solution to her problem. Clive would never agree to a divorce – or if by some miracle he did so, he would never let her have the children. And there was Geoff’s wife – a hopeless alcoholic who spent most of her life in clinics or nursing-homes. Geoff said of her:

“She can’t help herself. Besides, there are no grounds for divorce. I did once ask a solicitor friend of mine. I haven’t a hope. She isn’t unfaithful, neither is she mentally cruel. The fact is, between bouts, Barbara shows up as a devoted wife.”

So there were impossible barriers in the way of marriage between Lucy and Geoffrey. They could never have more than an “affair”.

The lilac suddenly blurred as tears stung her eyes. Depression, t. . .